


What I Can Do For You

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Hux is Not Nice, Jealousy, Kylo Ren Is A Creeper, M/M, Original Male Character - Freeform, Virgin Kylo Ren, Who Is Basically Hans Landa -- In SPAAAAAAACE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-08-23 01:42:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 44,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8308867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: And he snorts, just light enough to sound almost like a laugh. “And who might that be?”

  “Me.”

  “You.” And he’s startled enough that he’s actually struck dumb, though only for a moment. Oratory always has been one of the man’s most potent – and easily accessible – weapons. “Ren, you do realise that I would be hard-pressed to think of any two people more wildly incompatible than you and me?”
It appears the general has had a fuck buddy relationship with an admiral for some time now. Ren realises, and takes it badly. And offers to step into the other man's place. Despite the fact that Ren is an absolute fucking virgin. Hux is amused. Worse, he’s intrigued.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So -- I watched _Inglourious Basterds_ for the first time the other week, and [immediately fell in love with Christoph Waltz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq7qm3T3cPE). And for some reason, while idling thinking of fic ideas, I came up with "what if Hux had a fuck buddy in an admiral who was basically a Landa expy and it drove Kylo _bonkers_?" and this is what resulted.
> 
> Special thanks to [@thetiniestcake](http://thetiniestcake.tumblr.com) who kept surreptitiously slipping Waltz gifs under my messenger door, and to everyone else who expressed interest in seeing more after I wrote a scene with Ren deciding the admiral was a prick. And, you know -- although this is like 12.5k as it is, it's nowhere near the full story. But I have absolutely no idea if people would be interested in more beyond this, so I stopped writing at what felt a good ending place. Feel free to encourage more, if you'd like to see it; I'm pretty sure there's a hell of a lot more I could write, ha ha. I'm just always painfully anxious about writing stories no-one wants to read.
> 
> In the meantime, the song title comes from [this Sheryl Crow track](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxjl3ejBYwA). Because I'm always writing dodgy smut to it, and well. It bloody works. Ha ha.

The first he becomes aware of it, he takes it for accidental intrusion into someone else’s dreams. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s just – _odd_. But he’d done it often enough as a child, unable to maintain his own thoughts when surrounded by those who had no hope of shielding their own against such raw energy and power.

This is different. It comes to Ren not in sleep, but during meditation. And perhaps that accounts for its peculiarity, for while Ren usually delves deeply inward during such moments, Snoke had recently suggested that he press _outwards_. He doesn’t enjoy it, and never has; such openness of mind tends to leave him picking up on the emotions and thoughts of the thousands of souls aboard the _Finalizer_. Middling as they are, their combined mass presses down upon his own mind with a weight both frustrating and encompassing.

He knows why Snoke makes him do it. Such receptiveness gives him practice in both filtering out dross, and in picking up the small bitlets of useful information to be had amongst such dreck. But then it also helps him build his own defences: against endless noise, and the never-ending banalities of a more casual existence. He is above them. This reminds him why – and how very high.

But this vision is strange enough to give him true pause. It’s hardly the first time he’s run across sex, of course. Some minds aboard the star destroyer, it seems, are occupied by little else. But this…he has not seen _this_ , before. A long expanse of pale skin, deceptively smooth by distance, criss-crossed by faint silvered scars at closer inspection. The fire of crimson-struck hair, sweat-damp and dripping, brilliantly ablaze, eyes clenched tightly shut as a head is thrust back, and hips pressed down harder into the cradling pelvis of his partner.

Ren has never seen Hux without his uniform – there has never been any need, imagined or otherwise – and yet he recognises him like a suckerpunch to the gut. The long sinuous body, twisting and turning as it drinks deep of offered sensual pleasure, is indeed that of General Hux. And Hux is deep within the pleasures of another, uninhibited and careless, vital and _alive_.

The man beneath him is not so readily recognised. But when Hux curves forward, taking the man’s face between the firm grip of his own hands, pressing their foreheads close together as he drives harder down upon his lap: well. Ren _does_ recognise the man after all. Silver-haired and vulpine of feature, with eyes a smoky-steel grey – this is Admiral Areko, a man he has met but once or twice during his periodic visits to Starkiller.

Ren would dismiss it as a dream, a bizarre fantasy of some lowly lieutenant with nothing better to do with his time but imagine sordid stories of his superiors – but he knows Areko is aboard the ship. And that Areko has been planetside with Hux for the past four or five days. The man is to leave the next beta shift, and Ren knows this only because Hux had mentioned it but scarce hours before. Fresh off his latest mission, Ren had come to the bridge only to find Hux had not the time for even one of their usual posturing spats.

_The Admiral leaves in the morning, and we have much to discuss_. Hux’s manner had been nothing if not dismissive, turning away from the view of Starkiller from the bridge’s great viewports. _I should be glad to hear of your mission, tomorrow._

At the time Ren hadn’t cared. At the time he’d not had the slightest intention of detailing the mission to Hux anyway, for all protocol stated he should do otherwise. That Hux had been otherwise engaged would be more Hux’s problem than Ren’s own, if the infuriating man decided later that he did want to know of the mission after all.

But there is something about this dismissal that troubles Ren now: Hux’s _engagement_ is not what he would have assumed it to be. Rather than dry talk about an anonymous table, this is instead hands clenching at slender shoulders, Hux’s own slight weight in controlled rise and fall.

The admiral lies languid beneath him, for all his skin shimmers with fresh sweat. A moment later one hand rises, lazy fingers curled about a cigarra, bringing it to his own lips. And then: a tilt of the wrist and Hux, too, is breathing deep of the sweet tainted smoke. He pauses in his thrusts, savouring, half-dreaming – and then he blows it back in the admiral’s face. The laughter that follows, low and burning, has the Areko’s lean features twisting with a fresh smirk of his own. The cigarra, half-smoked, is crushed out on the bedside table, and then – the man is rising, rolling over, thrusting into Hux even as the general spreads his pale thighs but wider yet.

And Ren pulls out, pulls away, the gesture so violent for a moment he is unanchored, spinning through what feels a world of no gravity and no oyygen. When he finds his own body, again, it is trembling in its cross-legged position upon the bare tiling of his quarters’ antechamber. Fisting his hands upon the ground, Ren leans forward, breathing hard; even in the darkness, he is blinded.

And in his trousers: a hardness presses against the rough fabric, burning and insistent. Fumbling himself free, Ren does not even first strip away the gloves. Everything about it comes clumsy and awkward; such supposed pleasures are not something he has indulged himself in often, though not because any of his masters had forbidden it. He’d simply seen no need for it. He’d never wanted to know these particular mysteries of his own body.

But now: the brilliant red hair burns through his thoughts, crowning a head thrown back to reveal the long white neck beneath. The delicate blue tracery of veins is living lacework, drawn taut over the desperate quickbeat pulse beneath his jaw. And those long fingers, naked and clawing, leave half-circles of bruising in slim shoulders, nails etching out crescents of welling blood. His own hand is coiled tightness, twisting, tearing – _heat_.

The gloves provide the clear illusion of another. And with that, Ren’s grip changes: now it is knowing, teasing, a blunt thumb pressed over the cockhead, smearing the clear fluid gathering at its tip. Gasping, Ren curls in upon himself, and presses hard enough that his vision turns white and sharp.

And in his mind, Hux’s eyes open, lazy and knowing. He’d never known they would be so very blue.

_Careful, Ren_.

The heat of his come drips over his fist, spurts across the floor in front of his tangled legs. Ren can only stare at the end result of his meditation, aghast, uncertain, knowing indeed that he can never speak of such a conclusion to his Master. But the settling of his heart has an almost preternatural air, fated and fading, moving from frantic staccato to slow pounding rhythm. And the memory of Hux, so lovely in his orgasm, does not leave him: lazy and indolent, feline and lovely. His greater sense tells him to leave it be, but his instincts tell him otherwise; with a faint cast over the higher officers’ quarters, and – Ren can see him again, fresh cigarra in hand, lazy and nude, his other hand poised above his datapad.

And the admiral is taking it, placing it aside. _I am not so old,_ he says, light and laughing _, that we are done already_.

_Are we not?_

_We most certainly are not_. A smoky kiss, and then: hands, moving down to where a cock stirs already again. And Ren wrenches back, heart already roused to furious stutter-beat. His gloves creak with the force of fisted fingers, and what few belongings he keeps in this antechamber – they float, tremulous and tense, a galaxy held still upon the precipice of the void. His rage feels a palpable thing, suffocating and strangling as he shoves himself to his swaying feet. He has staggered halfway to the door before he realises his intention.

And now he is still, eyes wide and unseeing, mouth curved in a sneer. “What does it matter, to me?” he asks, of no-one in particular. But he expects no answer, and neither desires one; his extended hand never wrenches open the doors. He goes deeper into his quarters instead, to his ‘fresher, strips himself bare. When he is done, long limbs crowded into his small bunk, he does not allow himself to consider how austere and plain it might appear, compared to the tumble of sheets and blankets that had been Hux’s own bed.

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. None of it matters.

And yet, somehow, it _does_.

 

*****

 

There is no plan, no conscious thought. Ren awakens early, trains hard in his chosen facility, alone and in near-darkness. A quick sonic, and with helmet firmly over his head and robes in full swirl, he heads towards the portside hangars. The admiral’s entourage moves before him, the man himself at its rear, very nearly alone. It’s almost too easy to move past the man’s quick military step, turning, forcing him to stop in turn.

“Admiral.”

The man does halt, but manages to make the motion fluid and feline for all its suddenness. As his eyes alight upon Ren, his expression changes, and the very act of it prickles over Ren’s unseen skin. It’s that strange way of smiling he has: at first, there’s a flash of _something_ in his eyes, predatory and calculated. Then, spreading across his face, comes a bright and wide smile that engulfs most of his face. Despite that, it never reaches his eyes – which now shine with a dark light that’s both curious and cunning both. He all but exudes warmth and charm, its inherent falseness all but invisible to those who do not know any better.

But Ren, without visible eyes of his own for others to see, knows better than anyone what to look for. And he _sees_ it. Every inch.

“Kylo Ren.” Areko offers a brief nod of his head. While far from a bow, it could certainly be taken as some sort of concession to the rank and file that Ren, being outside the military hierarchy, himself rarely bothers with. And he straightens with easy grace, hands moving to parade rest at the small of his spine. “What might I do for you, today?”

“Cease your association with the General.”

“I – well.” The smile dims somewhat, forehead creasing in mild dismay. “We are both of the high command, and engineers, too, Lord Ren.” There’s a flick of his tongue over the title that cannot quite be called rude, but is not quite reverent either. Then Areko tilts his head to one side, regarding Ren with something far more actively intrigued than the gaze of but a moment ago. “And General Hux finds my input on the base construction of use to him. Not to mention I am always happy to provide it. I’m really not certain where this becomes part of your purview.”

He’d rather like to tell Areko exactly _where_ he might shove said purview, but he does not. The gritted teeth see to that. But the mask is as faceless, emotionless as it always is. “That is not the input I refer to.”

And Areko blinks, just once. “Ah.” It’s a delicate sound, one hand rising to adjust the officer’s cap upon his head. It looks so foolish upon most staff. And yet both he and Hux have the élan to wear it well. He’s smiling again when he adds, “Well, I’m also not seeing how this becomes any of your concern.”

“You don’t need to.” The words rasp through the vocoder like the swing of a sparking blade. “ _End it_.”

Again, a slight narrowing of eyes – and now he folds his arms over the neatly uniformed planes of his chest, rocking back on his heels. It allows Areko to look down at him, despite the advantage Ren holds in their height disparity. His words come easy, for all their sharp query. “Have you spoken to Hux about this, then?”

He bristles at the use of name without rank. He also keeps it to himself. “I don’t need to. I’m speaking to _you_.”

“Is he not to have any choice in the matter?”

“No.”

And one eyebrow arches. “Well.” His arms drop, one hand brushing lightly at a sleeve. And it makes Ren scowl; whereas Hux rarely wears any of the awards or medals Ren knows the man has earned, Areko’s breast is a glittering clinking testament to decades in the military. And the man allows a smile, fainter than the last, as he speaks again in low tones. “I rather believe he might object.” He leans closer, as if confiding to a co-conspirator. “It is _his_ star destroyer, Lord Ren. I would imagine he feels he can do as he wishes upon it.”

He’s taken half a step back before he even realises it. “It is _our_ star destroyer.”

“Ah.” Areko’s smile grows, deepens. “ _Ah_ …I begin to see the issue.”

Something dangerously close to _excitement_ taints those words – and at the sound of it, Ren must bite back the urge to close the Force about his throat, to drag him forward by his neck, to close gloved fingers tight enough to feel the grind of flesh and bone. But then, while Ren has abused certain crew members in his tempers, Snoke would be displeased to have to replace those of such influence. For all that many officers are greedy for rank and command, replacing an individual of Areko’s particular… _skillset_ …would prove likely problematic.

And Areko knows it. He’s likely known it his entire life, if his fascinating career is anything to go by. He’s straightening a pristine uniform when he adds, “If you have concerns about your co-commander, Lord Ren, I suggest you take them up with him first.” Then, he is turning back to the corridor, empty save for the staff at its furthest end – brought from his own star destroyer, anchored many lightyears hence. “Now, then: I have a shuttle schedule to keep, if you would?” When Kylo says nothing, he steps neatly past, with just the faintest brush of a uniformed sleeve against the trailing remnants of his cowl. “It was most interesting to speak with you, again.”

Ren watches him go. He can catch no sense of his thoughts, nor of surface emotions; like Hux, Areko is one of a handful of high-ranking personnel taught to resist the most banal of Force intrusions. They could not withstand Kylo Ren at full power – nor even at half, no matter what he suspects Hux believes – but it would be disabling, debilitating. Snoke has never spoken directly of such matters, but Kylo knows he would be displeased at the end result.

In this particular moment, he couldn’t give a Hutt’s greasy ass.

 

*****

 

His security clearances – and his mastery of the Force, for that matter – make it difficult for others to lock Ren out of their conversations. Hux and Areko are two individuals who _do_ make it difficult to access their communiques. But it is not impossible. Ren wouldn’t ever allow it to be.

Irritatingly enough, most of what they discuss is indeed primarily related to Starkiller. It’s technical enough to get boring by the third paragraph, nigh unintelligible by the fifth. Still Ren finds himself obsessively skimming every line, every diagram, searching for some innuendo between the two. They are unfortunately discreet. It does not escape his knowledge that the only reason Ren himself knows about their less conventional conversations is because he accidentally spirit-walked into Hux’s quarters at the most inopportune of moments.

One piece of information is worth its gleaning: Areko is to return to the _Finalizer_ , and to Starkiller. Said arrival will coincide with Kylo being off-ship for a mission, but granted it is completed within its assumed timeframe – and it _will_ be; for all Hux complains about Ren’s work ethic, he rarely needs even the time allotted to complete his off-ship assignations, let alone more – Ren will see Areko before the man leaves again.

He still cannot be sure what it really matters. Men of Hux’s standing are naturally limited in their options when it comes to fraternisation. It’s not unheard of for the higher officers to take their taste of the ‘troopers, as they technically have little influence over the upwards mobility of mere grunts; still, Ren cannot imagine Hux choosing that particular path. Liaisons between officers are a far trickier prospect. But as an admiral and a general, Areko and Hux are not operating outside any known parameters. A blind eye would be turned to such activities, were they widely known.

But still, Ren thinks of Hux, burning and brilliant, eyes blue-diamond chips in his flushed features. And then, of Areko’s smile, and his supreme unconcern at Ren’s demand.

“It must stop,” he says, aloud, and does not know why. He tells himself, again, that it hardly matters. But still he reads now a single paragraph in the latest missive, short and simple, and it feels as deadly as a stiletto blade slipped between the higher ribs.

_I do hope you received my gift, General. I would most like to see what you make of its lines and colouring_.

It could be something to do with Starkiller – or even with starfighters or sidearms, both of which Ren is aware of Hux’s particular fondness for, both in his ability to design and deploy. But the lack of jargon, and its very brevity, suggest otherwise to him. And his fingers curl, and for all his hands are not upon the datapad, a long crack creeps along its surface: branching, broadening, until the entire unit flickers in disgust and goes out.

There are other concerns. While Starkiller is only of peripheral interest to Ren – and he speaks to no-one of the dreams, of vague memories of a bent dark head, of sweet-scented flowers laid beside white stone memorials, of whispered names and sweet wine of disappearing vintage – he has occasion to be on its surface. But Snoke, conniving creature that he is, always has fresh intelligence to dangle before his most precious apprentice. Recent rumours suggest that the aging adventurer Lor San Tekka has knowledge of the whereabouts of the last of the Jedi. And that – _that_ matters more than any strange awakenings brought about by the foolish philanderings of an over-sexed general.

But in the man’s defence, Ren cannot see that it affects Hux’s work. Ren would not hesitate to tell Snoke if he believed otherwise. Still, the general remains efficient as always, his tongue always very quick over speech and sarcastic jibe alike. And Ren tells himself he does not care, that it does not matter, even as he takes his shuttle out into the black and leaves the general to await the admiral’s next visit, alone.

And if he jerks himself off to sudden, messy orgasm in the cockpit just once, to the remembered scorn of Hux’s last comments on the bridge, it’s nobody’s business but his own. It’s not even the first time. Once, when barely a teenager, he’d done much the same in the Falcon’s cockpit. The drive to do so had been stuck in too-high gear, somewhere between pride and a pathetic need for power. But in the startled reality of afterwards, he’d cleaned it up so Han never knew otherwise, skulking away in shamed silence. His ears would redden for months afterward, every time he sat there. At least his father never had the Force. He’d never known any better.

But Ben had always thought maybe he did, somehow.

When Ren returns to the _Finalizer_ , it is some cycles later. He comes alone, as he had been when he left; he has no need for ‘troopers when he’d only needed to speak to those few with information to offer, whether they’d wished to do so or not. Their subsequent details and deaths have given Ren few leads, but he can be certain of this much: the old man is alive, and he is moving. He knows they are coming for him.

Ren cannot regret that. Much as it may seem simpler to stalk down prey that is unaware of the hunter upon its trail, there is something far more invigorating to be had in the chase. In closing in upon one who knows how closely death walks upon its heels. Who can feel its hot breath on the back of a neck, waiting with each passing second for the hot push of blade through screaming flesh.

Ren is thoughtful as he descends the lowered ramp. The hangar bay looms beyond the small space, empty of personnel for all its great capacities. The engineers and techs know to leave the Upsilon be until Ren has cleared the area; if he has specific concerns, it will communicated to them when necessary, though he usually expects them to just do their jobs. Hux always swears his men are highly trained and relentlessly efficient, no matter their position. Ren just raises hell on the rare occasion they aren’t.

But there is a figure standing across the way, broad-shouldered in black, head bent forward. The blaze of his hair, and the blue-tint of his pale skin in the sickly projected light of a holoscreen, leave few options as to who it might otherwise be. Ren pauses, stares, says not a word. And of course Hux does not look up, though even one as Force-blind as Hux has to know Ren stands before him.

“General,” he says, at last, voice the coarse grind of sandstorm through the vocoder. “What are you doing here?”

One raised eyebrow, and still the bastard does not even look up. “Have you not got a mission statement to offer me?”

It startles him enough he replies without considering the consequence. “I – yes. Somewhere.” And then he’s scowling, voice darkening behind the damned mask. “Why? You don’t usually bother with debrief this fast.”

Of course Hux chooses this moment to look up, his expression perfectly even, unimpressed; he could have been surveying a poor effort at terraforming upon Starkiller’s surface. “Is that a problem?”

The single word of the reply is mutinous, flat. “No.”

“Then shall we?”

Hux turns to go, does not wait for Ren’s assent. For a moment he considers not following at all. And then he is moving swift at the man’s side, trying to not notice again how easily they fall to matching one another’s strides, long-legged and quick. A series of transporters, elevators, and endless corridors take them back to the higher levels, and the meeting rooms behind the bridge. Even before they arrive Ren starts to suspect that Hux had had other business in the hangars before his own command shuttle had arrived; while it was not entirely rare for Hux to step that far down into the bowels of the ship, the coincidence feels contrived.

With the doors locked to highest security, they seat themselves at some distance from one another. Much as Ren has always despised the formalities of such procedure, he will both occasionally and begrudgingly comply with Hux’s desire for post-mission debrief. Though he does suppose that when the man accepts Ren’s claims of confidentiality on certain issues, it’s more to do with deference to Snoke’s authority than respect for Ren himself.

“Take off that helmet,” Hux says, sudden, fingers moving in sharp irritated jabs over the lighted screen of his datapad. “I can’t _concentrate_ with you lurching around in that thing.”

It’s hardly the first time he’s taken it off in Hux’s presence. And yet, Ren does not move to do it now. Sensing rather than seeing his reluctance, Hux blows out a sharp sigh, lets his lips settle into fresh scowl. “Ren, honestly. I don’t want this to take any longer than necessary. I’m sure you feel the same.”

The clasps click too loudly in the silence, followed by a sharp accusing hiss of hydraulics. With the helmet now released, Ren pulls it upward, sets the thing aside. Almost immediately he’s struck with the self-conscious need to run his hands through his hair, though he does not. He stares down instead at his own datapad, which seems entirely too small where he holds it between still-gloved hands.

“Very good.” A faint hint of colour rises to his cheeks; his blushes have always been ugly, blotchy things. Hux appears either not to notice, or not to care, with full attention fixed upon his own screen. Because Hux does not have the Force. Hux cannot know how many times in the days since the dream that Ren has taken himself in hand, has brought himself to the precipice just contemplating the slant of light over that copper-fire of his _hair_ —

He doesn’t remember explaining anything. He scarcely notices the passing of time, except at its end: for now Hux is rising, holopad stowed in the pocket of his retrieved greatcoat, eyes turned already to the door and his tasks beyond it.

“We’re done here.”

“We should have dinner.”

It had been blurted out with no real intention – too quick, and too strange by half. Hux turns with reluctance; Ren can see it in the narrowing of his eyes, though it seems to be more in contemplation than outright contempt.

“Excuse me?”

Ren doesn’t bother searching for silvered words and clever turns of phrase; they only come to him in times of scorn, anyway. “I haven’t eaten in half a cycle. And it’s coming up on the end of your shift.” Hux still stares, as if he hadn’t already followed Ren’s implication towards its inevitable conclusion. “I just – we could eat. Together.”

For one long, pained moment, Ren suspects Hux is just going to turn and walk away. But he should know better. Hux can be cruel, but even in private, he still has the manners of an officer bred. “We could,” he says, each word drawn out too long, “but I have other plans.”

“What other plans?”

It’s been said too hard, too demanding. But Hux does not take it badly, as in reality he likely should. “It’s not strictly any of your business, I suppose,” he says, lips pursed now, “but the Admiral and I are dining together tonight.”

With the tightening of his abdominal muscles Ren can taste bile, gathering high in his throat. “You’d rather have dinner with _him_ than me?”

“Well, yes,” and it’s said with a touch of bewilderment, though the glint in Hux’s eyes betrays his guile. “He’s a bit more of a conversationalist, for starters.”

“I can talk.”

He shouldn’t have phrased it that way; Hux’s answering small smile has an aura of distinct pity. “But not so much about matters of mutual interest.”

“What was this, then?”

“This? This was _work_ , Ren.” Now he twists his wrist, glancing quick to the comms unit strapped there. “And I really must be going. Both the Admiral and myself do so abhor tardiness, after all.”

He doesn’t even remember climbing to his feet, let alone blocking the general’s path to the unlocked doors. “You can eat with him some other time.”

The humour has slipped from him now. “Ren,” he says, and this is the voice of the general, of the man who has ordered the lives and deaths of those around him for almost five years now. “He is leaving come the morning shift.”

“So?”

They are too close. In any other circumstance, Ren might have assumed they were but moments away from coming to blows. But Hux’s cold gaze is searching, somehow strange. And his voice, when it comes: it has turned so _soft_. “You really are such a child,” he says, almost wondering. And then he is straightening, stepping back, the frigid officer covering the oddness of but a moment before. “Get out of my way, Ren. I don’t have time for this nonsense.”

He should say something else. There is still so much yet to be said between them. But he does not yet know what those words, those thoughts, might be – and so Ren only watches as Hux dons his greatcoat, his cap, and disappears in sleek flurry through the doors. When they hum closed at his back it leaves Ren alone, staring at his empty hands. His saber is a heavy weight on one hip, cold black promise.

Ren could always interrupt their intimate little gathering. As co-commander of the _Finalizer_ , it wouldn’t even be entirely a breach of etiquette. They could claim the dinner was a meeting of friends, rather than colleagues, but Ren’s never been known for his tact. And yet, the thought of seeing the man, again – of seeing him with _Hux_ —

Ren lets it go. The training rooms are always open to him. He will go there, and lose himself. He will not think on this now. He will be something stronger than this weakness that yearns for something he has never needed before.

And for a while, he is.

It has grown late by the time he decides to return to his own quarters. He had not bothered to shower at the training facilities, for all he’d been left well enough alone for the duration. Shucking his outer robe as he enters his rooms, Ren pads through to the refresher before stripping naked, stepping under the spray of water. He usually satisfies himself with the sonic, but being co-commander has privileges, and tonight: he feels rather like exercising them.

It seems worth it, given he feels somewhat more centred by its end. Yet he remains naked as he moves of the small ‘fresher, returning to his antechamber. He should dress, and yet he does not. Even the filtered air of the _Finalizer_ ’s life support systems is almost gentle upon his skin now, fine hair standing on end. For a long moment he only stands, still, staring at nothing. And then he is sliding down to the floor, legs crossing, eyes slipping softly closed.

It has become almost too easy to let loose his consciousness. But then, it is not dissimilar to how he rips into the prone minds of interrogation victims: he slices into their thoughts with a piece of _himself_ , vicious and sharp. And they cannot deny the intrusion. The original cut is always clean, though very deep. But when he shifts, and turns, and _twists_ – ah, that is where the pain truly begins.

But this is different. More diffuse. He _could_ wield pain, like this. But it would become far more difficult the further from the anchor of his body he is, the further he strays from the conduit to the Force that it provides him. He is more spirit than flesh, here, thoughtful and seeking and strange.

He knows where he goes before he can admit it. But a brush over two minds, and he can see the scene before him: the admiral in his chair, cigarra with its curling smoke in one careless hand, palm bent back over wrist. His uniform, much in the manner of Hux’s usual style, remains impeccable.

The same cannot be said for Hux. The older man pats his thigh, a quick and almost playful tap-tap, and Hux moves closer. Hux’s uniform is not pristine. Hux’s uniform is entirely _absent_ , the man dressed only in a pair of blue panties, riding both low on his hips and high on his arse, a straight-edged confection of concertina frills.

Ren chokes, feels his body shudder far behind him. But his mind is absent – his mind is _here_ , absorbed by the motion of Hux straddling the man’s offered leg, one arm about his neck, the other deftly taking the cigarra so he might breathe it deep. Already he has begun a slow, low grind against the other man. They’re speaking, but Ren cannot hear what they are saying. His attention cannot be taken back from the bulge, the dampness, the methodical way Hux is rubbing himself off against the admiral’s slim thigh.

Time makes no sense. He blinks, and then: the admiral is naked, and they have moved from the couch in Hux’s antechamber to the generous bed within the small sleeping quarters. Hux has turned, presented upon his knees; the admiral is now naked, the general still in his ridiculous undergarment. Strong hands close on narrow hips, though it is Hux rubbing his ass along the cock presented to him. From the smirk upon the admiral’s face, those frilled edges create delicious friction. Even as the man murmurs his pleasure, Hux arches his back, looking coyly back over one shoulder.

“Can we get on with things?” he says, and actually feigns a neat little yawn. “I _do_ have early meetings, next shift.”

Areko drapes over him, chin hooked over shoulder, lips close to his ear; still, Ren hears everything. “I know how little you need your sleep, General,” he whispers, hips already moving in slow thrust. “And you won’t have any from me,” he adds, but he’s hooking a finger, pulling sideways; Ren sees but a flicker of a fluttering hole, already red-rimmed and dripping, and then another man’s cock is pressing in, pressing deep, and he’s spiralling back to his own body, finding himself on his back and come drying on his heaving abdomen and he doesn’t even know the time at all anymore.

It’s in the ‘fresher, water scalding, when the terrible realisation hits: Hux likely had been wearing that damned tiny underwear when he had come to Ren, in the hangar. At one stage, he’d marched ahead to one the elevators – his thin frame, dwarfed by the flapping tails of his coat. But beneath that, and the firm fine tailoring of his trousers – the frilly frippery of those damned panties. Stretched over his tight little ass. Cupping and cradling in the front—

He comes again, gasping, furious, the tiles immediately opposite now shattered in stellate breakage around one aching fist. There’s blood, dripping, bright fierce crimson, but it is washed away moments later by the sting and burn of hot water. Ren closes his eyes, fingers drifting to his cock, and loses time again. It doesn’t matter.

_It does matter._

It is two or three days before Ren admits that to himself, striding out upon the bridge without so much as a glance to the tensing crew in the pits and at the terminals around him. He only has eyes for the bright-haired man at their head.

“General.”

Hux, who stands with hands clasped at his back and eyes fixed upon Starkiller, does not look away from his precious creation. “Yes, Ren?”

“I must speak with you.” And, before Hux can tell him simply to get on with things, “it is a confidential matter.”

He glances sideways, to the scroll of data endless upon the screen to his left. “Then it can wait until I have the time to spare for it.”

“ _Now_.”

Hux loathes to be challenged before his men. When he turns now, coldly furious, Ren realises he still has no idea what colour the general’s eyes really are. He has studied them for so long now, and yet still cannot tell. They could be blue, green, or somewhere in between: now, they are aflame, bright with acidic fury. And yet, all he can think of is how they had been when closed: tight, straining, back arching, hands dug deep into the slim shoulders of another officer.

The office provides spectacular view from its transparisteel viewport. While Ren has unwittingly admired it in the past, now it invokes low twist in his gut. He wonders if Areko has seen this, too. With Hux in his hands, bent forward, white skin and crimson hair—

“ _Ren_.” His voice breaks through like a ballistic missile. “What is it?”

For one fierce, bright moment, Ren contemplates just turning and walking away. Hux would not even suspect the real reasoning; it’s hardly the first time he’s yanked Hux away from his work just to change his mind. But he flexes his fingers, and for all the bacta has washed away both injury and potential scar, he can still feel the fierce bite of the ‘fresher stall’s broken tiles.

“It’s about the Admiral.”

That gives Hux pause; Ren, after all, has little to no interaction with such individuals. “What about him?”

“I know what you do with him.” His hands rise, press the release of the helmet; their eyes met, hold true. “It must stop. Now.”

And the answering flare of his eyes burns so bright: a fire of blue and green and hot vivid _white_. Ren wants nothing more than to throw himself forward, to be taken and consumed and reduced to ash and dust. But Hux already draws back over his fury the veil of cold contempt, of ice and glacial disgust.

“What the Admiral and I do in our private quarters and time is our own business, Ren.” Long fingers reach out, roll in sharp military tattoo over the desk. “I shouldn’t have to tell you to keep out of it.”

Ren remains still, immutable in his dark robes, helmet between his hands. “It’s inappropriate.”

“No, it’s _not_.” Hux catches himself then, on that flare of withheld anger. When he speaks again, moments later, his voice has returned to that low even roll. “While I am not going to explain my reasoning to you on any level of detail, I can assure you that restrictions of fraternisation do not apply.” But it seems he cannot bite back this curl of his upper lip, the faint white flash of teeth. “If you’re planning on running to Leader Snoke, that is.”

“This has nothing to do with Snoke.”

The flat words cause some flicker of discontent in his eyes, but Ren barely catches it before it is shuttered away again. “I’m glad you realise that.”

“But it has to stop.”

“No.”

“ _Yes_.”

One hand rises, as if to rake back through his hair; Hux catches himself a moment before it happens, though his voice still rises. “What Randel and I do—”

“ _Randel_?”

That gives him pause. The flush creeping up over his cheeks cannot be entirely borne of his anger. “That is his _name_ , yes.”

Ren’s own words are too fast, tumbling over one another as they rip free of his lips. “And does he call you _Armitage_?”

The room’s ambient temperature, already dropping by swift degrees, abruptly feels as though if one of Starkiller’s frigid storms had swept up from that distant frozen surface. “That name is not for you,” Hux says, and though it is slow and careful and perfectly civilised Ren can taste the iron tang of promised blood.

“But is it for him?” he says, fingernails digging into the battered plastisteel of his helmet – and Hux’s nostrils flare, back altogether too rigid now.

“Ren.” It’s a warning, but then Ren has never heeded those well.

“You know what he is.”

“He is a high-ranking and well-regarded officer in the First Order, yes.”

“But he doesn’t _care_ ,” he says, and now his voice rises to a shout. “About _any_ of it!”

In the startled pause that follows, only Ren’s quickened breathing is any real sound. And Hux holds his quiet, head tilting, almost delicate as he chooses his words. “That is hardly a revelation to anyone,” he says, “least of all myself.”

“But it matters,” Ren insists, and Hux seems caught between a smile and a frown.

“Does it?”

“It does!” Incredulity hits him hard, and low; he never would have expected to have needed to explain any of this to _Hux_ , of all people. “The First Order doesn’t matter to him. He doesn’t believe in any of…this.” And he waves one hand about the general’s office, only just reeling in the urge to punctuate gesture with Force. “Not the way _you_ do.”

“I don’t expect everybody does,” Hux replies, and it’s almost _pleasant_ – this, from the man who gives such impassioned speeches he has reduced more than one of his officers to tears. And now he’s shaking his head, leaning hips back against his desk, frowning for real. “Ren, I’m quite aware of his history. But I’m also perfectly aware that we hold his loyalty as long as we give him something that he wants.” Now his voice cools, arms folded across his chest. “The New Republic could never offer him the half of what we do,” he adds. “We entertain him. They would not.”

“And is that not below you? _Entertaining_ him?”

Again, his voice hardens. “What we do is our business.” Straightening once more, he moves towards the door. “And I will say no more on the matter.”

“What if he does go rogue? Turns to the Republic? Or worse, the Resistance?”

When Hux turns back, his chin has tilted upward, hands again folded behind his back. “Would _you_ not have better reason to do so?” he asks, a general’s low command. “And do _you_ not present a higher risk than Areko ever could?”

For a moment, all he sees is black. And then, all he sees is _red_. “How _dare_ you.”

And even as the air now holds the scent of burning ozone, teeth aching, bones in low vibration with the growing charge of the air, Hux is as unmoved as can be, standing at the eye of the storm. “Ah, you see, now you know how I feel,” and he seems almost pleased, for all he is a man standing beneath a dangling executioner’s blade. “Your past is not my concern. Just as my personal life is not yours. Shall we end it there, then?”

Ren closes his eyes, thinks of how Snoke would be most displeased if he should find his apprentice had punched a fist through his general’s face. And yet, that is not the reason why he takes a deep breath, lets it go, and coils the Force back within himself. “You deserve better than him,” he mutters, and Hux makes a strange little noise that might have been a chuckle, once upon a simpler time.

“I’m honestly not sure how I could do better, given his competition.”

“You need someone more deserving,” he says as he looks up, again, and the words are urgent, low-voiced; he recognises this as the voice he speaks with only to himself, in the darkest deepest moments of meditation. “You need someone with actual _devotion_ to the cause you yourself hold so dearly.”

And he snorts, just light enough to sound almost like a laugh. “And who might that be?”

“Me.”

“ _You_.” And he’s startled enough that he’s actually struck dumb, though only for a moment. Oratory always has been one of the man’s most potent – and easily accessible – weapons. “Ren, you do realise that I would be hard-pressed to think of any two people more wildly incompatible than you and me?”

“This is our ship,” he snaps back. “Snoke obviously thought we worked well together.”

The faintest hint of horror underlies each word now. “Please tell me you didn’t ask the Supreme Leader about this.”

“Oh, _now_ you’re worried?”

With a set jaw, Hux is again impervious. “I would imagine if Snoke had taken umbrage at my sexual relationship with the Admiral, it would have become a sticking point long before now,” he says. “As it is, I’m declaring this conversation over.”

“But you’ve never had a Force user.”

“Have _you_?” he rejoins, just as quick. “Because, Ren, I can’t imagine that any previous partners you’ve… _enjoyed_ …likely found themselves in much of a position to be demanding what they wanted of you.”

His snapped reply comes entirely too quick. “I’d be good at it!”

With a tilt of his head, Hux latches onto it with alarming clarity. “That was…an interesting choice of tense.”

Ren pauses, though he already knows the depth of the hole he has stumbled into. “What?”

“You’re saying you _would_ be good at it. Have you not been, in the past?” Now he frowns. “Has there _been_ a past?”

Ren answers not. And Hux moves back from the door, returns again to his desk; he takes his place behind it with an almost fastidious care before he looks to Ren again.

“…well. That’s…interesting.”

“Hux.” It’s meant to be harsh; it’s rough in all the wrongs ways instead, saltwater rather than coarse grinding sand. “Hux, I don’t offer this to just anyone.”

“From the sound of it, you’ve offered it to precisely _no-one_.” And his eyes narrow, that strange crinkling that just precedes full-bellied laughter. “Or did some other poor soul reject you before I got the chance?”

Ren again leans over the desk, looming and dark. “This is how it’s supposed to be,” he insists, and the startling realisation of that is the only reason he does not attempt to imbue his words with Force-led persuasion. “Don’t you see it? It’s you. And _me_.”

Sitting back in the chair now, arms crossed across the smooth planes of his uniform, Hux purses his lips. “You really want this?” he asks, deliberate, careful, a general assessing the strangest of battlefields to wage war upon. “To have me, just so the Admiral can’t?”

It’s stubbornness, bordering on petulance. He’s always been so very good with both. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

“So you’ve said,” he says, and draws out his silver cigarra case. “But then, do I deserve _you_?”

It stings, like the lash of a ragged whip. The command of the _Finalizer_ had been Hux’s alone before Ren’s assignment – and from the very beginning, the man has treated him as a burden, foisted upon him as a cross to bear.

_It is no wonder it took me so long to realise this._

“If we do this,” Ren says, voice low thunder, “you have to end it with him.” As Hux opens his mouth, he snaps with lightning-strike, “I won’t share you.”

Hux subsides with a snort, though for only a moment. “But I can’t make those sorts of promises, without an idea of what I’m expecting.”

“What do you mean?”

The nasty little edge to his smile does not match the mild tone of the accompanying words. “You wouldn’t buy a starfreighter or fighter without some idea of its capabilities and calibration, Ren. Would you really expect me to throw over the Admiral in favour of a virgin without even trying him out first?”

Ren only stares. Words have never been his particular forte, and in this, he has none at all to offer. It seems only a natural progression that Hux ought to take that silence for assent, already reaching for his datapad. Because of course the general would have to _schedule_ his sex life.

And it seems, then, that Hux might have some latent psychic ability after all, when he says with something close to boredom, “You need a full medical.” He flicks from one screen to another, and his fingers begin a rapid movement. “Because while we can do this with barriers, I prefer without.”

Ren closes his eyes, but only briefly. The darkness provides no shelter, no calm. “I’m…I’ve never done this before,” he says, so low for a moment he suspects Hux will not hear. Perhaps even _hopes_ Hux will not hear. “With anyone. I mean.”

“Yes, but you do run riot in all manner of non-regulation scenarios. I hate to think what sort of body fluids your battles have bathed you in.” When he glances up, one pale eyebrow has arched high, his mouth unsmiling. “Besides, I myself am far from a virgin.” He pauses, already glancing down again, before adding, “In these sorts of matters, Ren, you also need to look out for your own safety.”

Ren has no idea what he is expected to say to that. It seems Hux doesn’t care either way, because his tone remains all business as he clicks out of his request, giving the datapad a tight little nod. “There. I’ve booked you in for an appointment, three cycles’ time. We’ll do this in seven.” When he glances up, the question in his eyes can only be called rhetorical. “Unless you have any objections?”

Ren glances down to his own comm unit, to where a small notification is already jumping up and down in the corner of his screen like a rabid bloody womprat. “No.”

“Good.” The chair presses back in near-silent slide, Hux rising in one efficient movement. “Now, I have work to do.”

In the days that follow it proves almost prohibitively difficult not to think of what is yet to come. But distractions are always on offer, and Ren takes every single one hard. He even finds himself trekking down to Starkiller. That is almost pleasurable – scaring a squadron of ‘troopers, out in the snow. All indigenous life on the surface had been wiped out in the earliest terraforming of the planet. So for those Stormtroopers, to come across Kylo Ren, hulking and harsh-breathing in ragged black in full storm: it had at least been particularly good practice for him, in stopping multiple blaster fire. He’d even taken some pleasure in dashing off a haphazard report to both Phasma and Hux; it was hardly Ren’s fault if a few of them hadn’t gotten out of the way of subsequent ricochet.

He had been setting about returning to the _Finalizer_ in the hours after said incident, moving towards his own hangar, when he first noted the unfamiliar shuttle. And yet – it proves familiar, too. But he recognises it by the figure standing at some distance from its lowered ramp, clearly about to board. Without thought, Ren crosses the room at a preternatural clip, closing a gloved hand upon a uniformed forearm.

“What are you doing here?”

And the Admiral blinks up at him, hardly shaken either by touch or the harsh interruption to the conversation he’d been having with the officer at his side. For her part, the dark-haired woman now has skin the colour of ashy snow as she steps smartly backwards; Areko only blinks once, and then shrugs. “Just indulging ourselves on a brief stopover on our way through to the main hyperlanes.” He makes an experimental tug on his own arm, but did not persist when Ren tightens his grip. His eyes never wavers, voice still utter civility when he adds, “The General and I always _do_ have things to discuss.”

The vocoder had never permitted much in the way of emotional range, but there’s a particular flatness to even this one repeated word. “… _discuss_.”

His laughter is brief, entirely merry for all Ren knows he must be bruising through even the thick material of the sleeve. “Oh, there’s no need for your _concern_ , Lord Ren. There’s hardly the time for any hanky-panky, as they say.” And then the smile begins to fade, eyes taking on a strange, muted gleam. “Although, I think you should be careful.”

His fingers tighten, loosen just a fraction. “What?”

That strange, slight smile returns; he has taken his arm back before Ren has even acknowledged that he has released it. “General Hux. He’s…slender and sleek and lovely, yes?”

In the distance, something trembles. “ _What_?”

Areko has set about reordering his uniform, eyes moving away to trace the retreat of his unnamed lieutenant. “But deadly,” he adds, almost soft. “Not to mention filled with potential energy, built up and kept ready always for the kill.” Now he meets Ren’s eyes, and the smile has quite vanished. “He’s like a vibroblade – an unusual and particularly well-crafted one.” He actually reaches forward, across the thickened atmosphere between them, and pats a companionable hand against Ren’s forearm. “Do be careful with him. Much as I realise your own chosen weapon is a strange one indeed.”

The hand flies backward, and Ren does not so much as shift a muscle. “Never speak to me again.”

The snarled words, the casual use of the Force: in the face of both, Areko gives only a small shrug of shoulders. “Well, as you would,” he says, light even as he closes fingers about his own wrist, rubbing at the place beneath where sleeve meets glove. And of course, he’s smiling, again. “But I do believe you might change your mind.”

Ren turns his back, stalks away, and does not look back. Areko’s shuttle is cleared for takeoff before his own, but they trace different paths; Areko, to a hyperjump point where he will return to his own star destroyer, while Ren moves back to the _Finalizer_. His assigned meeting will be that very evening.

Ren does not wait for it. “Did you fuck him?” he demands, palms flat upon Hux’s desk. He does not even know when Hux had returned from Starkiller – if, indeed, Hux had even met Areko down there. From the way Hux stares down his nose from his seated position, his scorn is but beginning.

“Who?”

“ _Areko_.” At Hux’s growing frown, he adds, “I _saw_ him down on Starkiller.”

His eyes close, just briefly; the forefinger and thumb of his left hand pinch about the bridge of his nose even as he takes a deep breath. “ _Ren_. I had my tests completed several cycles ago. I would hardly compromise their results by dallying with the Admiral at the very last moment.” His hand waves towards the door. “Now, if you’re quite through with your tantrum?”

“Let’s do this now.”

It’s several hours yet to go, and from the tightening about Hux’s eyes, his rigid personality loathes the idea of a ruined schedule. One gloved hand slaps down on the desk and he shoves himself upright, turning for his greatcoat.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he mutters, slinging it over his shoulders in the manner of a cloak. And he tilts his head towards the door, like a senator requesting an intern open it for him. “Well?”

Ren stalks through, doesn’t hold it open, doesn’t look back. He can’t even allow himself to regret it, even as he moves so quick he cannot be sure Hux follows. But when he reaches the security-locked doors of the man’s quarters, he sees no point in waiting then, either. With a flick of the wrist the doors open with screeched protest, and Ren steps inside.

He doesn’t bother closing said doors behind him. And when Hux arrives some time later, having kept a quick but hardly rushed pace, Ren can feel the irritation at the state of its locks. Still he palms it closed, and there’s a faint chiming melody as he secures them with the highest clearance.

Standing still at the viewport, Ren keeps his gaze fixed upon the long length of the starship, and the broken orb of Starkiller hung in the void beyond. He’d gleaned enough of an impression of the room itself from simply walking into his quarters. Of course it proves orderly, neat: an external manifestation of the man himself.

“Do you want something to drink?”

With arms crossed, fingers curling beneath tensed muscle, Ren doesn’t look back. “I don’t drink.”

“Hmm.” Behind him, Hux uncaps something strongly scented; Ren half-turns, just in time to catch Hux throwing back a golden liquid in three thick gulps. His throat works, pale sliver above the high collar; the tightening of Ren’s groin in response is almost painful. Hux pays him no heed, pouring himself another. But he leaves it with a click upon the bar, moving closer. The harsh white light of his quarters reflects in his eyes, rendering them blue, sharp, predatory.

“Hux—”

But Hux does not reach for his helmet. With eyes fixed upon the visor, his left hand pulls at his robe, and the right dips into his trousers. Ren could have thrown him off with scarcely a thought; already the air turns about them, thick, heavy, vibrating with the growing energy of an agitated Force.

But Ren remains very still. Hux still does not break their gaze, but there’s a faint distance, the haze of growing concentration. His movements are hardly kind, but aimed precisely to their target. And as Ren’s breath begins to rasp through the vocoder it turns softer, cruel in its shrewd skill. At full hardness Hux stops, a long pause of closed fingers about its root, a thoughtful look flashing across his features. Before Ren can gather enough sense to try and divine what Hux might be thinking, Hux is yanking hard, pulling him off in long strokes. He doesn’t quite realise the heights he has achieved, but Ren is falling, coming hard, spilling in his pants like an adolescent.

And Hux wears an expression something like scorn as he withdraws his hand, gives the white splatter across black leather a distasteful look. And Ren can only stare, wide-eyed, as Hux strips both gloves away, tossing them carelessly towards the low table.

“There,” he says, and pushes a now-naked hand back through his hair. The glint in his eye speaks of old rumours, of how the general had once been a sniper without compare. And then he snorts at Ren’s continued muteness. “Come, come – it really wouldn’t do to have you _coming_ too soon, would it?” With a careless shrug he shucks off the greatcoat, laying it beside the soiled gloves. “So, shall we begin?”

“Wasn’t that the beginning?” It’s croaked, and entirely humiliating; Hux’s smile suggests he is enjoying himself perhaps entirely too much.

“Go and clean yourself, in my ‘fresher. It’s just through there. Use water, not the sonic. And clean yourself _entirely_ – as they say, I should be able to eat my dinner off you.” And as Ren all but chokes on the image, he smirks wider. “Then dry yourself, hair and skin, and come back to me. No clothes, no towels. Just you.”

This has all been a terrible, terrible mistake. But Ren does as asked, even as it chafes at even his confused ruin of a mind. Hux had been born military, had then been brutally bred to command. For all his own stringent training, Ren has never been in the same position, the same ranking. He has always turned away from strict order, seeking the greater comfort of chaos.

_(“Ren, you do realise that I would be hard-pressed to think of any two people more wildly incompatible than you and me?”)_

His cock has returned to half-hardness when he walks out, leaving his walk slightly hitched and halting. Hux, for his part, appears to be working on his second glass of whatever liquor he has selected – though for the time Ren took in the ‘fresher, it could be the third or fourth. As he comes to a halt before the general, reclined as he is upon his low couch, Ren resists the urge to cover himself in any way. His face is ungainly, mismatched and strange – but he is quite aware of the aesthetic appeal of his body. Hux’s attention, rigid and assessing, speaks of approval. The smile curling his lips turns hungry in a way that twists Ren’s stomach into fierce pulsing knot.

“Come here.”

As Ren stands before him, a lazy stance suited to no soldier, he entertains the faint hope that those damp lips might soon close around the head of his cock. Instead, one bare hand rises, with just the first two fingers and thumb extended; a moment later and they work in slow slide, coaxing Ren again to full hardness. In return Ren touches Hux not at all, more by instinct than spoken request. Already his balls draw up beneath him, tight the thought of spilling all over that contemplative face, filling the faint crease in Hux’s forehead.

So fixed is Ren upon Hux’s face, the working of his right hand, he does not even consider what the left might be doing. A sudden movement, and then: cold metal presses over his cock, slips downward until it sits snug at its root. Almost immediately both hands are withdrawn, and Hux crosses a lazy leg over the other.

Ren scarcely notices, the faintest stirrings of anger moving just below the surface of outright bewilderment. “What the pfassking hell is _that_?”

“A cock ring.” The obscene term manages to sound ridiculously proper in his prim little accent. “To stop you from coming too soon and ruining my pleasure,” he adds, and he’s got his glass in hand again, sipping lightly at the rim. “You _are_ a virgin, Ren.”

“I can control myself,” he says, sharp, two fingers pressing at the ring; the sensitised skin shivers beneath even so hesitant a touch, and he hisses sharp breath. Hux is in turn draining his glass, setting it aside as he rises.

“My ship would suggest otherwise,” he says, but it’s mild enough an insult between the two of them. “Come with me.”

Something in Ren tells him to leave. Everything else screams at him to stay. And still he follows Hux into the bedroom, groin tight aching heat; he’s scarcely inside before Hux shoves him back, knees colliding with the uppermost edge of the bed. As he sits heavily down, Hux draws back – but only far enough that he might begin to strip himself bare.

It shouldn’t be attractive. Hux’s movements are nothing if not methodical and quick, each item neatly folded, set aside, aside from socks and undergarments. Both of those are pushed instead into the laundry chute. Ren doesn’t quite manage to quash a faint flicker of disappointment at the regulation issue of the latter. But then Hux pushes a hand back through his hair, disordering it completely as he contemplates Ren before him, and his mouth has turned very very dry.

Given how this all began, it is not as if Ren has not had glimpses of it, before – of how very slim and _small_ Hux is, beneath the tailored lines and padding of the uniform. But he proves sleek in his skin as he moves forward, one hand pressed to his chest, pushing him down and back even as he climbs up upon the bed to straddle his hips. The urge almost burns: Ren wants little more than to run his hands over that skin, faintly dotted with sprays of freckles he had not even imagined the existence of.

And Hux snorts, as if he were the mindreader. “Do I need to tie you down?”

He’s never been eloquent, exactly, but given his upbringing its hardly surprising Ren would be able to draw upon sarcasm at such a moment. “It wouldn’t matter even if you did.”

Fingertips trip down his breastbone, somewhere close to the edge of mocking. “At least you’re honest, I suppose,” Hux observes, and then he’s standing again, arms crossed as he looks down his slim nose. “But this is about what _I_ want, Ren. You can enjoy yourself, I’m not denying you that. But you’re the one who wants this, not me.” With one flick of the hand, he indicates Ren should move up the bed, even as he adds, “So you’d do best to let me decide if I think you’re worth it.”

It should sting. This is hardly the first thing in his life that’s left him wondering at his own worth. But something stranger follows – something oddly peaceful. As if this is just the way of things between them. They’d had their first argument within ten minutes of meeting one another, four years ago. It’s just more of the same, in the end.

With Ren now reclined full-length upon his bed, Hux returns. Slim thighs bracket hips while he opens his hands over Ren’s torso, as if seeing for himself how such depth and breadth really _feels_. That doesn’t surprise him. Ren’s seen Hux down on Starkiller countless times – and while practical engineering is somewhat beyond his time these days, Hux has good hands and a keen eye for machinery and technology both. As the only child of a man who had had a preternatural sense for all such things, Ren recognises the trait with sharp painful clarity. But Hux’s deepest instincts are tempered by education; Ren suspects he would have been truly brilliant, if not for his upbringing.

But he is still unparalleled in sheer talent, at least amongst the chief engineers of Starkiller. More than once Ren has seen those gloved hands over models, over holos. Always pushing things around, rearranging, tweaking, even making broad sweeping changes that will offset their schedule by weeks. But Hux will accept nothing less than perfection.

And Ren knows that he himself is not perfect. Yet he feels surprisingly calm beneath Hux’s probing touch as it trails over chest and throat and shoulder and arm; it dips down a moment later to abdomen and thigh and the long lines of his calves. Only when it sweeps up, again, does it come anywhere near his cock. It should not be such a striking touch, considering Hux has already jerked him off this evening. But: it has turned gentler. More thoughtful. And Hux gives a light little hum as he rubs his thumb over the tip, dipping into the slit.

“It’s been some time since I had one so large,” he offers before Ren can ask, even as if sounds half as though he’s talking to himself. “You’re just going to have to…hold _still_.”

Ren cannot be entirely sure he ought to take that as a compliment. But Hux has fallen to silent contemplation again, lazy hand still working over his cock. He shifts back, narrow little ass pressing over hips. When Ren jerks upward, Hux settles him with a sharp slap to one thigh. The reason for the movement does at least become rapidly clear; Hux has retrieved a tube of medical-grade lubricant, and is already slicking up his fingers with it. Then, his hand moves back, the other braced beside Ren’s hip, expression growing ever more distant by the moment. Ren would give much to see what he is doing but cannot look away from Hux’s eyes, half-lidded and hazy.

“What do you want me to do?” he asks, unable to contain himself. Hux is strangely warm against him. He’d always thought the man would be so terribly cold, perfectly matched husband to the frozen bride that is his beloved Starkiller. But Hux has fixed his eyes upon him again, though his right hand still works behind.

“I already told you. _Lie still_.” And he glances down, lets out a huffing breath at what he finds there. “And then I’ll see if your cock is up to my exacting standards, in a moment.”

With lips pursed, Hux rises where he straddles him. Then he is moving back, one hand steadying himself. For all his earlier talk of care, he doesn’t take his time; there’s the first sudden strange pressure of the head of his cock about a hole that feels entirely too small, and then: _in_. And Ren had not expected the _heat_ of it. A gasp escapes, echoed by Hux’s own; his face is limned with bright concentration, and Ren feels the pressure directed outward until he’s again slipping down, drawing in. When he has taken Ren entirely within himself Hux stops upon a slow, light sigh. With eyes closed, hands splayed upon Ren’s trembling abdomen, he leans backward, and _laughs_.

“Hux—”

“Shut up.” A slow rise, a slower fall. With a hissing breath, Hux does it all again. And then, _again_ , over and over, pace increasing with each pass. Ren’s own hands have fisted in the sheets. Hux had told him to lie still, and he will do so. Such decision makes little difference to the yearning desire to lay hands upon him. His own mind has become a haze of desires both met and still rising. It is almost too easy to let it radiate, to touch upon the edges of Hux’s own.

Hux had been taught long ago how to resist the most superficial of Ren’s tricks. But he’s forgetting it, now; even compartmentalised as his ordered mind is, it cannot hold in such a fracturing state. Not in _this_. And Ren can _taste_ his thoughts, rich and rising; the scent of them is just as dizzying, as desiring. Yet they are shapeless, impossible to catch between his hands, sublimating from solid to ephemerality in but a split second of hot pleasure.

No, he does not touch Hux – not with his hands. But with the other man’s mind open, Ren slips inside without the slightest of resistances at all. And it is open to him, indeed: bright and orderly and as much a labyrinth as the subterranean warren of Starkiller itself.

But Ren knows what he wants. While he is certainly better versed in pain, pleasure moves along many of the same neurological pathways. It’s the work of but a thought, and he chases rising, raging desire along those lines, lighting up nerves and ganglion clusters, amplifying, intensifying. Hux moves quicker above him, muscles clenching, breath hollowed out and gasping. And Ren presses harder, trailing a thousand unseen fingers in places where they will be felt most.

Release takes Hux like a shot to the stomach, or so it would appear; even as Ren feels the hot spurt over his abdomen Hux is doubling forward, hands fisting around his shoulders, bones grinding beneath muscle; he’s shaking, gasping, and beneath him Ren feels an impossible swell of something between terror and elation. And then there’s a muffled _snap!_ as his own cock lets go; ring broken so that Ren might follow him over that same blind precipice.

Their breaths come hard, out of sync; Hux remains unmoved, bowed forward, with that impossible hair hanging like a ragged veil before his eyes. With trembling fingers Ren brushes it back; when Hux makes no protest, he allows his hands to form loose cradle about his downturned face. The general remains unmoving, save for the rise and fall of his ribcage, fighting his breath back. Ren’s hands trace down, cradling shoulder, arm, slipping down to all but span his narrow chest. The desire surges with fierce force, nothing gentle in its demand. But then, Ren does not know how to be. From the answering violence, Hux prefers it this way.

And so now he’s pulling him up, pulling him down; twisting over, Ren rises, Hux on his back beneath him. It’s still so close to his second release of the evening, and yet his dick already returns to hardness. It’s not enough, not really, but Hux’s thighs are wide, his hole still slick and open. Without thought, without invitation, Ren finds himself pushing in again.

“Kylo.”

The word holds all the force of a sucker punch, and Hux pulls not an inch of its power. And he’s dizzied, half-delirious when he lowers his head, eyes clenched tight as he presses his forehead to the beat of the other man’s heart.

“ _Armitage_.”

And quick fingers dart up, close about one nipple and twist. _Hard_. Nothing kind, nothing sensual had been meant by the gesture – only pain. And Ren cannot help the response. He’s rearing back, then: one hand closes about Hux’s throat, pressing hard enough that he can feel the beginning rasps of lost breath.

And Hux, wet-eyed, features flushed, furious, does not move, does not even try to speak. Under that accusation Ren finds himself withdrawing – but both hands move now, to where Hux’s are sprawled at his shoulders. Ren presses him down, pushes up until hands are held above his head.

“Ren,” and it is perfectly pleasant, for all the words travel glacially slow in their speaking. “While I do realise you have little to no experience with such matters, I can assure you I am _not_ one of those people who enjoys being forced into a lover’s declaration.” When Ren does not move, he takes a slow and steady breath through his nose. “That means _let me **go**_.”

He does not want to. Part of him scorns Hux’s desires; part of him demands he just _take_ what he wants until Hux realises he needs the same. But Hux is not in the habit of untruths, at least not those so directly given. And he is pulling back, turning away, seated upon the edge of the bed. Behind him, he can hear Hux rising into a seated position of his own.

Ren lurches to his feet, and then: he falls into a rough-hewn pace across the limited space the floor provides. Something in the motion is comforting, as if he swings his saber in every step; the motion, heavy footed and deliberate, rings out across the room. Still, he can all but _hear_ Hux’s frown. Though he turns, feral-eyed, the raised eyebrow his behaviour has earned says enough for what Hux makes of it.

“You have to stop seeing him.” And his dick, still at half-mast, twitches upward. “I won’t have you otherwise.”

“Well, what if I won’t have _you_?”

For a moment he is stymied, basic comprehension far beyond his grasp. “But you need me,” he says, slow. And then he’s moving forward, hands clenched to stop him from reaching down, from shaking it into his Force-blind mind. “Hux – didn’t you _feel_ it?”

The twisted expression is stuck between confusion and complaint. “Feel _what_?”

“Destiny!”

It’s not entirely unusual to see Hux looking as if he’s on the verge of a migraine. His expression now promises it to be a major one. “Look, your Force nonsense doesn’t—”

“ _No_.” His knees hit the floor, the pain distant, unimportant. His open palms are upon his opened thighs, Ren crowding up too close between them, their noses but moments from collision. “You and I,” he says, urgent. “Together. We are more than this. More than everything.” And he grips harder, but not nearly enough to bruise, his eyes wild against the cool scrutiny of Hux’s own. “But it has to be _you_ and _me_. And nobody else.”

Though Hux does not pull back from his touch, he tilts his head, contemplative. “Ren,” he says, and it’s almost patient, almost pitying. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”

“ _Hux_.” They touch, now, from groin to chest. “I can do this. For _you_.”

The sigh is slow, soft; with hands braced upon his chest, Hux pushes him backward. Ren goes, says not a word as Hux removes his hands, delicately crossing the room to his closet. Only after he has taken from it a robe, dark grey and anonymous, does he turn.

“I must think about it.”

“Hux—”

“ _Ren_.” His voice turns sharp to match the harsh knotting of the belt about that narrow waist. “It’s not that simple.”

“But it should be,” he says, stubborn, too fierce by half. And instead of fury, Hux’s shoulders bow forward, three fingers pressed to his temple in what can only be weariness.

“Perhaps in the world that made you,” he says, almost beneath Ren’s hearing. “The one that made me is rather different.”

“We can make a new one,” he says, and he knows it to be true. “For the both of us.”

For a long moment Hux only stares at him, as if he is a species so alien as to be utterly incomprehensible. And then he’s turning away, head bowed, hands still at the poorly-knotted belt. “And you actually do believe that,” he mutters, wondering and weary; when he glances back, his expression has congealed to utter exhaustion. “Ren. Go back to your quarters. _Sleep_. Then go about your work, whatever that might be.” His hand hitches up, flaps at the door with an almost alarming lack of grace. “We’ll talk again later.”

And Ren cannot help but move to his side, and rejoices silently in the fact that Hux does not draw away. “Only _talk_?”

Hux’s kiss is a sudden fierce thing, brief as spring storm. “We’ll see. Now – get _out_.”

Later, in his rooms, Ren kneels before Vader’s mask and contemplates what this means. There is familiarity in this fate, after all. Hux had not understood what potential lies between them, in much the way Padmé Amidala had not understood what Anakin Skywalker had asked of her. Had _needed_ of her. But then – in this, Ren has the time that Vader had not.

_Perhaps this is where our story changes._

Ren turns inward, bows his head, and gives himself over to the Dark. Yes. There is time enough, yet. He will make Hux see what they can be, together.

_And then you will truly know just what I can do, for you_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I didn't think I was going to write more of this, but then something slipped -- probably my sanity -- and this happened. Given this takes us up to the beginning of TFA there's probably a third part lurking in there somewhere, but this is such a mess I'm really not sure anyone will stay on the ride that long. Feel free to let me know otherwise, as I have absolutely no idea what I am doing here.
> 
> And despite the fact that it IS a terrible disaster, I'm dedicating this to [@saltandlimes](http://saltandlimes.tumblr.com) because it was her birthday recently, and she's just one of the nicest people in fandom I know. I never feel like I fit in, but she always has something lovely to say. I'm sorry it's not a continuation of a different story, but this is what appeared. Dammit. Still. <3
> 
> And despite the fact this is a second chapter with no title, it lives in a Word .doc of its own called _[Orange Crush](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mSmOcmk7uQ)_ because reasons. I also was listening to the Editor's _[Munich](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugWtuTmiGLM)_ while writing because I was struck by the lines _People are fragile things, you should know by now/Be careful what you put them through/People are fragile things, you should know by now/You'll speak when you're spoken to_ and yeah. These boys are messed up. If you're still here with me, thank you so much for reading.

He has always prided himself on being a straightforward man, if not a simple one. So he cannot be surprised when Areko messages him an invitation to a get-together on his own superweapon. _To blow off some steam_ , he says. _Don’t you just delight in shooting things that actually move?_

It might be a veiled criticism of Starkiller – heavens know _her_ chosen marks do not move in such a way as to interfere with the quantum peculiarities of her targeting systems. But Areko has known Hux for many years, and as a consequence understands well Hux’s particular strengths. And it’s likely he also knows what Hux has missed most, in being general over even such great creation.

When he arrives at the coordinates Areko had provided, blaster rifle neatly tucked into the storage compartment of his snowspeeder, he’s not disappointed to see what the man has created: an improvised shooting range, complete with moving targets in the form of Stormtroopers. “They’re to go on furlough for the next four days,” Areko explains, careless, even as he begins fitting together his own rifle with sure and certain hands. “They’ll be recovered enough by the time they return to active service.”

Hux cannot say no. There’s something powerful in this, visceral and welcome: in dressing down to fatigues, in going out to the valley behind the main compound, in holding his reassembled blaster rifle firm in hand. Of course it’s only set to stun. But it will still put a ‘trooper down for long enough that they’ll have to be collected at the end of the exercise.

It doesn’t last as long as it could – Areko is being unspeakably lazy about his shots, but Hux takes every one that comes his way, and he has but rarely taken a shot that he does not believe will hold. But even as the clean-up begins, the two commanders make no motion towards their own speeders. Instead they remain at the improvised hide Areko had ordered prepared, smoke curling upward, unhindered by wind. And Hux closes his eyes against the sky, feels the fresh bite of the air upon his upturned face and in his lungs: chill burn, the duality of cold heat.

“So you had him, then?”

Hux takes a long drag, opens his eyes to watch it go. “I did.”

The man’s curiosity will likely always get the better of him. “And how was he?”

A brief glance to his rifle, still assembled perfectly at his side, and then Hux looks back to the cleared range. “Is that really any of your business?”

With a light snort Areko returns to the cleaning of his own long-barrelled rifle. “Well, of course a man might be permitted his secrets.” With a glance upward, he fixes his gaze upon Hux, the one that could prove as penetrating as it is indolent. “But you did seem awfully content to discuss the matter _before_ your consummation.”

“Well, times do change.”

Taking up a fresh cloth, Areko removes the sight, begins a careful clean of its lenses. “I merely offer myself as a confidant.”

“As you so often do.”

While hardly finished, he sets it aside, chuckles. “And as more than merely that, of course.” Though he does not reach out, Hux can still feel the heat of promised touch upon the nape of his neck. “If you’re not going to be giving yourself to him again, perhaps you and I might generate some heat between us – inside, away from this damned cold.”

He purses his lips, hand itching to take up the rifle again. It really had ended far too quickly for his tastes. “I imagine he’d take that poorly.”

“Ah, so you _are_ still entertaining his suit, as such?”

Another long drag, and Hux stubs out the cigarra on his case. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” he says, tidying the remnants away, “but he doesn’t seem inclined to let me go that easily, shall we say.”

“He wishes to pursue this liaison further?”

There is no easy answer to that. Hux resents that knowledge, even as he knows it to be inevitable. One gloved hand reaches forward, traces absently the engraved stock of his old rifle. “I don’t know what he wants,” he says, thoughtful; his family crest is a convoluted thing, history piled upon fancied mythology. He’s always preferred the Order’s emblem: so much tidier, so much simpler. And he sighs. “But I think it’s mostly because Ren himself doesn’t appear to have any idea what he wants, either.”

“He wants you.” It’s honest, and digs deep beneath his skin because of it. “I’ve spoken to him. I can tell you that much, at the very least.”

He should be taking the rifle to pieces. Instead he reaches again for his holder, shakes loose another smoke. “I can’t say I’m available for that sort of thing,” he says, far more careless in execution than in actual intent. “I have duties.” Then he snorts, even as breathes deep the first drag. “As does he, for that matter, much as I haven’t the slightest idea what the Supreme Leader actually intends for him, in the end.”

“Does that bother you?”

Narrowing his eyes at his companion, Hux debates for a short moment whether or not an answer is deserved, or even advisable. “In the sense that it could be a poor utilisation of a unique resource, perhaps,” he says, slow. “But then one must assume Snoke has a much clearer idea of Ren’s potential than I ever could.” Then he turns his attention again to Starkiller’s sky – bright today, and very blue. It’s nothing like the endless grey of faintly remember Arkanis. He has always loved it all the more for that.

“And I have no intention of having anything to do with the Force myself,” Hux adds, voice hard in the glacial air. “Yes, it has its applications – and we all know perfectly well that the Resistance will use whatever advantage it might give them. It is only sensible that we arm ourselves in such a way that we might do the same.”

With his own rifle almost entirely put away, Areko grins over at him. “And yet you don’t wish to command him.”

“He’s outside my purview.”

“That’s never stopped you before.” He flips the latches on his case, gives a short laugh. “The general who commands the flagship of an admiral’s fleet.”

“You can just say you envy me the _Finalizer_ , Areko.” He inhales long, deep. “But remember: I _do_ allow you to touch her. Now and then.”

The man’s rolling his eyes as he sets his case aside, reaches over to take a fresh cigarra from Hux’s own case. He lets this faint trespass go unpunished, looking out over the glacial path that creates the valley laid out before him like an invitation. It might once have once been a fjord in the birthing stages – before the Order had hollowed her out, created her anew. Had made her over into the shell to house her borrowed power, burning and bright.

“So he didn’t give you any real indication what he’s expecting from this?”

Hux allows his own cigarra to burn on untouched, and then ashes it to dust. “He…he spoke of destiny.”

The valley still holds his attention, though he can feel Areko’s gaze upon him. And then: he erupts into wailing laughter, choking half a second later on the wreathing smoke. Then he’s laughing again, even as Hux turns a cold gaze upon him.

“Are you quite finished?”

He’s not, not really, but he’s shaking loose ash from his cigarra, straightening his fatigues even as he wipes his eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he says, but his dance with an amusement that says clearly otherwise. “But you do have to admit it’s rather amusing. I mean – _destiny_.”

Hux says nothing. And Areko lets the silence stand, finishing the cigarra before he speaks again.

“But even then…there’s more to it, perhaps.” He has turned thoughtful now, head tilted. “You do realise whose son he is?”

Hux glances out again to the valley, to the clear and open path it provides through the rising thrust of black mountain rock, and its cresting veil of snow and ice. “Well, we’re certainly not to speak of it – and I can’t say I’ve ever felt the urge to discuss it with Ren himself.” It’s no answer at all, and he sighs, then admits, “But I am aware, yes.”

“And he wishes to ally himself to you.”

Hux rolls his head towards Areko, one eyebrow arched. “I think that’s rather too sensible a way of putting it.”

“Oh?”

Reluctance doesn’t hold his tongue still for long. While Hux has always been able to keep his secrets, he has never taken well to mysteries that cannot be solved by logic alone. “He spoke of fate, as I said.”

“And of the Force?”

He sighs, looks again to the untouched rifle. “Unfortunately.” It had felt a live creature in his hands: both reproaching of his neglect, but delighting again in his undivided attention. “I have no interest in these matters,” he murmurs, and hears again the flick of a lighter when Areko fishes out one of his own cigarras.

“So you say.” He breathes deeply in, then out. “But it’s power,” he says, and Hux doesn’t need to look over to know he’s smiling. “And you’ve always been interested in power.”

“Does that explain your own curiosity about the matter?” he says, and though it’s not an accusation, he doesn’t mask the scorn. “You wish to access to his power through mine over him?”

He only shrugs, smoke hung about him like pale grey aura. “You know me. I’m always interested in the unusual.” And he leans forward, eyes as hungry as his stance. “But do you actually believe you _do_ have power over him?”

Again, his fingers move over the rifle, tracing its sights. “In all honesty, I don’t know. I left before he could make the situation any more ridiculous than he already had.”

“What did he offer you?”

Allowing his frustration free rein is unusual, and yet somehow impossible to now deny. “I don’t _know_. That was half the problem.”

“But imagine what he could offer you.” And Areko’s delight is a peculiar thing, bright and burning, like looking into the heart of a fresh-born star. “Kylo Ren, the only true heir to the legacy of Darth Vader!”

In tense contemplation, Hux again traces the Aurebesh that underlines the crest. He never speaks the words aloud. They’ve never meant anything to him. “He is also the only son of Leia Organa.”

“Halfway between the Light and the Dark, as they say,” and the satisfaction is enough to turn his stomach, to have him looking away from even his beloved weapon, from the days before he has been granted command and design input over Starkiller herself.

“He’s volatile,” Hux says, mechanical and careful – and one hand fists in the snow, the white mantle that stretches across the surface of the planet he has made anew. “How could one person expect to control that?”

“Says the man whose work enabled the harnessing of the heart of a star.”

“That was physics,” he says, and this time glances over to his cigarra case again. “This is the preternatural. I don’t pretend to be an expert in matters such as those.”

“But you’re curious.”

“Did you ever meet him?” It’s more demand than actual question. “Vader. I know you were stationed on the first Death Star.”

Something flitters across his face, like a shadow over the sun. “Only very briefly.” Then he scoffs, very light, and takes a deep puff. “And for all I was one of Krennic’s young protégés, I was hardly in a position to be meeting the likes of Lord Vader.”

“But you did.”

Areko half-turns, eyes narrowed, though his lips curl into something resembling a smile. “Not _officially_. I only ever saw him from a distance.” His eyes take on a distant slant; Hux can almost see the reflection of the sky entire within them. “Quite a creature he was, too – human and cyborg and something rather all the much more than that.” Then he snaps his eyes down, around, and his lips purse. “I could feel something similar, in your Lord Ren. Even if I hadn’t known, I would have recognised him for what he is.”

“And that is?”

“A Skywalker.” It’s said with frank relish. “And what a family they all are, eh?”

He must look away, again. “If by family, you mean a disastrous force of frank chaos, then yes. They are a _family_ indeed.”

“But as I said, I only saw him from some distance. I wasn’t much interested in him at the time, of course – I was an engineer, and far more intrigued at the idea of meeting the ever elusive Galen Erso.”

That is almost too easy a way to gain Hux’s full attention. “And did you meet him?”

“No.” The disappointment trembles like earthshock beneath his every word. “Krennic was rather…possessive of him, shall we say?” And then he frowns, looks down at his hands. “It really was such a terrible loss. The both of them.”

In the silence that passes, Hux cannot doubt Areko’s sorrow – it is too strange, too uncertain, to be anything but genuine. And it takes his attention so utterly that he must almost physically poke him, to bring him back to their conversation.

“And you weren’t assigned to the second Death Star?”

He shakes his head, just a little – then he snorts, flicking ash from the tip of his cigarra. “Of course not. Those of us fortunate to not be anywhere near the facility the first time had little enough desire to see the second fall around our ears.”

“You didn’t have much faith in the Empire?”

“After seeing Lord Vader at the heart of the Death Star? I doubted more the power the Rebels saw fit to bring to bear against him.” And there’s something like fury, something like fascination in his voice now. “The first of the new Jedi destroyed that station, Hux. We all knew it, from the Rebel propaganda if not more official sources. I was quite aware that for all the armies we might build, the last battle would be fought between Jedi and Sith.”

As he sets about lighting a fresh cigarra of his own, he looks not to the work of his hands – but instead to the path of snow stretches before him, pure and driven. His own words come just as cold, just as clear. “Is that your feeling now?”

Areko appears unmoved, raising his cigarra again. “Well, rumour has it there are no Jedi, and no Sith, not anymore. There remains only Lord Ren, and his Master.” And his gaze turns penetrating, head cocked. “But why would Snoke keep him, if not as a weapon against what yet may rise?”

Hux’s demand is cold. “What do you know?”

The surprise he wears now comes true, and all too easily. “Nothing.” But something sly twists his expression now, as he stretches out his boots and nudges at some scrappy little leaf with the toe of the left. “But you and I, we only play at a war we have no real place within.” Before Hux’s righteous anger can explode, Areko flicks his hand, ash arcing across the snow. “ _They_ are the ones who started it. I would imagine it is their place to finish it.”

And his own cigarra is a crushed ruin in his thick gloves. “There will be no place in the galaxy for their kind,” he says, and he knows he will preach these words from his assumed pulpit, spreading them across the galaxy entire. “They are a dying breed. And this will be the end of it.”

“Well, yes. Lord Ren might very well be the last of them.” And Areko reaches into his pocket, withdraws the silvered case within. Only when the butt is within, its clasp clipped closed, does he add with almost offhand glee, “But that’s all the more reason to keep him close to hand, surely.”

Hux’s gaze moves again to his rifle, silent and sleeping now, black and silver against white snow. “We can win this war with what we have ourselves.”

And for the first time, Hux hears an edge to the older man’s words. “We can win a _certain_ war, yes.” And then, startling in its sharpness, “Don’t be so wilfully blind towards what you don’t understand,” he says. “Especially when it _wants_ to be understood.”

And Hux’s hands move quick over his rifle, dismantling it in mere seconds. “This conversation is over,” he says, sharp as he clips each component into its assigned place within its battered case. Only when he has snapped it shut, taking his feet, does it look back to where Areko remains seated still upon the snow. “And I don’t imagine I need to tell you that all of this goes nowhere else.”

He rolls his eyes. “Who else would I tell?” But even Hux cannot deny the affection in even his strange mind when Areko adds, “There’s no-one else in the fleet quite as interesting as you.”

He should be angry. But Areko has always made that difficult. There is a reason such a strange man has lasted so long in the rigid ranks of the Empire, and then the First Order. “Flattery gets you nowhere,” he says, though he cannot help but add, “you old hound.”

One foot snaps out, clips Hux lightly on one ankle. “Oh, it’s had me in plenty of _fascinating_ places.”

He fastidiously moved himself just beyond the man’s reach, switches the rifle’s case to his other arm. “Yes, well, this engagement has taken up quite enough of my rec time. I must get back to work.”

He shrugs, already reaching again for his cigarra case. “Of course.”

“It was a most enjoyable hunt, Randel.”

“And I’m glad for it.” One fine cigarra is between his lips, with but the faintest flicker of fire as he lights it up. He takes a deep breath, breathes out sweet smoke before looking up to meet his gaze again. “But before you make any definitive decisions, Armitage,” he says, utterly serious, “you ought to give the poor boy a good dicking.” Another drag, and this time he chuckles. “I really do think he’s in desperate need of one.”

Hux barely conceals the need to shake his head in immediate dismissal. “I’ll consider it.”

“Just do it.” Again, another drag; his gaze is fixed upon the stretch of snow before them, altered by the great changes wrought beneath the false surface of Starkiller. “The trick to finding the truest solution to any problem lies in the collection of all pertinent data.” He cranes his head back, gives a smile that is frankly filthy. “You ought to mine him of what you can. While he allows it.”

He doesn’t even know entirely why he says it. “It does mean you and I cannot be, in the meantime.”

And the man shrugs, already halfway through his cigarra. “Well. You did only start this to get up your father’s nose, as I recall.”

Hux closes his eyes, but only briefly. “My father’s been dead a long time.” And before Areko might reply, he tilts his head back the way they came. “Shall we?”

The man does not move. “I’ll stay. Enjoy the scenery.” And he reclines back, edged smile still the promise of easy smut. “And I do so love to watch you go.”

Hux snorts, and turns away. With his snowcoat buttoned tightly about his waist and chest, bulky and broad over the fatigues, it is hardly as though the man could hope to see anything worth the view. Hux still feels Areko’s eyes on him all the time of their parting.

 

*****

 

Ren is often off-ship on missions that come to him from Snoke alone. While Hux has been granted access to their nature and specifics in the past, Snoke himself has recently made it clear that these missions are classified, relevant only to the practices of the Knights of Ren. Given that Ren generally chooses to dispense with the resources of the star destroyer, fulfilling his objectives alone, Hux cannot demand disclosure simply by dint of being the general. In that, Ren simply becomes a wraith in black, one that wanders Hux’s ship at odd moments in between his varying deployments.

But in this most recent of missions, he knows that Ren has taken Phasma and a detachment of Stormtroopers to Arthon. Apparently it is something to do with the Ottegans withholding valuable information. Doubting that he’d get the full story from Ren or even Snoke, he has instead resolved to ask Phasma to make a personal report to him at the earliest possible opportunity.

It proves fortunate that when they do come back to the _Finalizer_ , it coincides with his own return from Starkiller. Yet he only discovers this upon entering the bridge, when his brief assessment of its functioning reveals the hulking black shape motionless at its furthest end. Rather than approach, Hux steps sideways, arresting the attention of Unamo at her assigned station.

“How long has he been there?” he asks, voice hardly lowered – if Ren chooses to hear him, he will do so whether Hux wishes it or not. Unamo herself does not appear to realise this, her own voice lightly hushed. It sparks low annoyance in his gut; such superstition and fear-mongering might be useful seeds of discord to sow amongst their enemies, but Ren should not be free to do it amongst Hux’s own crew.

“Oh – hours. He hasn’t moved at all. We ourselves have gone from disturbed to nervous to high alert to…well. I suppose it’s become polite disinterest, at this stage.”

Hux only just subdues a snort. Such display is hardly appropriate behaviour for a general before a petty officer. “Has he talked to anyone?”

“No.” Her face flickers with some unknown emotion, one quickly suppressed. “We thought perhaps he was waiting for you.”

The statement could be – and likely is – completely benign, but it’s still disturbing enough that he has reason to believe otherwise. Even if Hux himself had been intending to speak to him all the same. “Thank you,” he says, already turning away to leave Unamo to her work. He then strides across the catwalk with easy purpose, coming to loose parade stance at the other man’s side.

“Ren.”

While Hux himself keeps his eyes fixed forward, it’s still more than faint insult to note Ren himself does not turn either. He resembles nothing so much as a statue, wrought in the same dark armour that had been the prison of Darth Vader himself.

Then, a single word, rendered flat and dead by his vocoder: “General.”

“Ren,” he says, again, the acknowledgement chill. “I take it your mission was a success?”

For a moment, Hux thinks Ren will not answer. “It provided a lead.”

“To what?”

“You will see.”

It twists in his gut, this bitter gall he has swallowed one too many times. “No doubt I shall.” And, before Ren can dismiss him without even moving away, “We need to speak.”

“We are speaking.”

Sometimes Hux wonders if he won’t end up grinding his teeth completely to dust. “I’ll be in my office.”

He leaves the bridge at brisk clip, and with no clear idea of whether or not Ren would actually choose to follow. But he has barely seated himself behind his desk when the locked door whispers open, and then closed again but a moment later.

“It _is_ customary to request entrance,” he says, not looking up from the screen he has activated before him. Ren’s reply is entirely expected, though given with more animation than anything offered up on the bridge just moments ago.

“You _invited_ me.”

“So I did.”

Again, they do not speak for what seems entirely too long; it is a distasteful waste of time, when Hux schedules his own to the very second. And Ren can hold his silence all too well – and had given a more than adequate performance of such but moments ago. Hux will not indulge such posturing, not today.

“I’m amenable to a second assessment.”

For a moment, it seems Ren does not have any idea of what Hux had meant by that. And then he lets out a strange noise, more static than recognisable sound. Hux suspects it might have been a startled laughter when coming from an ordinary man.

“How very _romantic_ of you, General.”

“Ren,” he says, but without true warning. “This isn’t about sentiment.”

“Isn’t it?”

The reply takes him low, hard, a sucker punch to the solar plexus. But he is seated, and allows himself a long breath. In return, Ren only watches, having delivered the intended blow. Standing still, with the mask pulled down tight over his damned face, he is for once in total control.

“Would you take off that damned helmet?” he demands, too quick, too hot. And Ren does not.

“You were with Areko.”

“Yes. I was.” There has never been much reward in direct lies given to one such as Ren. “But we weren’t intimate, if you must know.”

“I know.” He pauses. “Otherwise, I’d be able to sense him on you.”

It is as if Ren has run a finger down his spine, skin pebbling in blooming gooseflesh across his body entire. “If you’re going to complain about a lack of romance on my part, Ren,” he says, remarkably even, “I might as well inform you that I don’t find your theatrics or wizardly powers at all appealing.”

“But that’s not entirely true.”

It’s almost crooned, and so very certain. Hux looks down, finds his hands spread palm-flat and trembling upon the desk, and has no memory of how they got there. “Look. Ren. If you don’t wish to do this—”

“I do,” he says, brusque as he takes another step too close. And when Hux glances up, he finds the damned mask but a slap away from his aching hands. “But we do this down on Starkiller.”

He’s too startled to hide it. “What?”

At first, Ren does not answer. He steps instead away from the desk, towards the viewport. Starkiller is arrayed before him there: a bride awaiting her wedding day, still in the last stages of being made over into the vision of beauty and death she is yet to truly become.

“I know how much you love that thing,” he says, voice hidden by both angle and by mask. “I know it gets you off.”

“ _Ren_.”

It _is_ a warning this time, but the broad back remains turned to him – and even if he turned back, there would be nothing to see writ upon that hidden face.

There’s a low hum, Ren clearing his throat – and Hux can now make out a tightening of shoulders even as he straightens them, gaze presumably still fixed upon the superweapon. “You made all the decisions last time,” he says, low, a fierce tone Hux has heard on comm channels and in mission reports. “If you wish to do this again, then I have a few suggestions of my own to make.”

“Such as doing this on Starkiller.” He finds himself drumming his fingers along the desk, ceases it but a moment later with military flourish. “Fine. I have matters to see to on the _Finalizer_ for at least the next three cycles, but I can return to Starkiller at their conclusion. Do you have any further missions scheduled?”

“Not at this time.”

The breath he’s been holding burns in his chest, but he doesn’t let it out. This is no time for relief. “All right, then. We’ll convene again on Starkiller, when I am done here.” Ren does not move, still apparently caught in Starkiller’s web. He prompts him, too sharp. “I’ll message you when I want you.”

There’s something about his silhouette when he turns – the curve of faint amusement, perhaps, somehow visible through even the hulking layers of his armour and robes. “Did I not say that I wanted to be the one calling the shots this time?”

He smiles, the chilly line he more often uses to haunt young officer’s dreams when they do not meet his standards at all times. “If this doesn’t suit your tastes, Ren, then we don’t have to do this again.” And then, bolder than he has expected, “I’d be content enough to let it lie.”

Ren stills. “But you suggested this.”

“Well,” he says, leaning back in his chair, allowing his smile to curl to something like snide delight. “Perhaps it just struck me that you might like to experience for yourself what it feels like, to be on the receiving end.”

And perhaps there’s a bit of incredulousness to the tone when Ren says, “You want to _fuck_ me?”

This time he lets the smile turn pleasant, as if he’s offering the man a glass of some rare vintage. “Do you _want_ to be fucked?”

Now Ren actually does snort, and Hux can all but see the roll of his eyes behind the sightless gaze of his visor. “I should have known you’d have a filthy mouth. I’ve always thought it was too prim, too proper, too precious about those endless speeches you’re always making.”

“Yes, and yours looks to be made for sucking cock. Not that I can _see_ it right now, but I remember.”

Ren moves too quick – he always has, for a man of his size. “Oh, you’ll see it again, General,” he whispers, bridging what little space remains between them as he looms over the desk. “But for now, I have other things to do.”

Hux blinks, and does not retreat. “A likely story.”

But Ren does not rise to the challenge. In a swirl of robes and pointless theatrics, he is gone again, leaving Hux alone. With the door secured once more, he allows himself to recline in his chair, gloved fingertips pressed to the swell of his lower lip. Miscalculations were not something he fell to often. But he has to wonder if he’d actually begun this particular project with all the pertinent data already to hand.

 

*****

 

For all they hold the co-commandership of the _Finalizer_ , they do not actually need to meet often to discuss its operations or basic functioning. From the very beginning Ren has demonstrated almost no interest in the running of a star destroyer, and also has very little to do with Starkiller itself.

On that basis alone Hux finds it strange that Ren would suggest they meet there, despite his little jab about Hux’s _particular_ attachment to it. He does make occasional and unpredictable use of its varied facilities – certainly Hux doesn’t bother to complain, given it keeps the ‘troopers on full alert to have Ren skulking about the place without prior announcement of his presence – but in many other aspects, it feels as though Ren actively turns away from it. Hux would be insulted, if he wasn’t actually somewhat relieved. The entire undertaking is proving already a difficult enough project, without having to deal with Ren’s penchant for destroying expensive equipment when something does not go his particular way.

Hux manages to spend barely one full cycle on the _Finalizer_ before circumstances call him down to the surface again. It something that is both frustrating, and then – not. Much as he enjoys the command of a flagship vessel such as his star destroyer, there is something vital and visceral about the weapon he has had such an imperative hand in creating. Whenever he docks with her, steps down onto her surface: Starkiller proves thrumming and alive beneath his feet, the pale façade of her natural form just mere mask over the mechanical marvel that is her true centre. There are those who would say the same of him, of course – that Hux is but mere droid covered over with human skin, his brain a supercomputer, his heart a mechanical pump pushing hydraulic fluid through joints of fine plasteel.

He curls his lips even as he breathes deep of the cool, clear air upon the open landing pad. Things likely would be far simpler, if only that were true.

It takes some time to move to the command centre, to take stock of the situation and make a timeline of exactly how the latest issues will be managed. But he had messaged Ren before leaving the ship, both as a courtesy to a co-commander, and in something of more intimate aspect. Still he had not expected the comm he finds then upon his datapad, and its curt request that Hux meet Ren that same evening.

It would be easy enough to decline. It is well outside of the schedule Hux had expected to work with. While Ren himself has little use for effective time management, surely he couldn’t be surprised when Hux insists on the right and proper order of things.

But Hux does not reply to the message – and when his shift comes to his end, Hux does not return to his quarters. He remains instead in full uniform, striding quick through the long corridors with greatcoat slung about straight shoulders. Ren had mentioned one of the great observation decks. That, he _does_ find odd, and deeply so. It would have made more practical sense for Ren to invite him to his quarters – or more likely, to insist that they use Hux’s own. He certainly had not expected to be here instead, alone, looking out over the facility in a calm contemplation he was not often afforded the opportunity to indulge in.

Having spent many of his formative years upon star destroyers, Hux has a familiarity with them that occasionally veers dangerously close to indifference – or at least, perhaps he sometimes takes their remarkable construction somewhat for granted. Being on-planet here only makes it all the worse. The crisp air of Starkiller tastes always clean and clear; the freshness is never polluted by the self-contained units that dot the landscape in orderly lines. All the dramatic change wrought upon the planet has taken place beneath the surface, at least from this viewpoint. Only from the bridge of the _Finalizer_ can Hux see the encircling equator, mechanised and half-hollow, the planet so very like a cybernetic human turned weapon.

But here he sees only the stark lines of dark buildings, lurking amongst the tall trees, hunched beneath their mantles of snow and ice. The _Finalizer_ is remarkable. Starkiller is sublime, something no other person has created ever before.

And his regret tastes bitter, strange upon lips unaccustomed to its presence. Hux has everything that he needs, here and now. It would be a mistake to meet Ren, no matter what Areko might have suggested otherwise. And Hux knows the man well enough to suspect that the admiral had only suggested the indulgence out of curiosity, to see what would become of the general and the knight together. Such intrigues came rarely, hardly more than once in a lifetime. And Areko has lived long enough to be within the orbit of two such strange creatures.

Nobody speaks of it, but so many know the truth. Anakin Skywalker, the lost Jedi said to be their storied saviour – in truth, the man had become Darth Vader. And such uproar there had been, when Leia Organa had been revealed as his daughter – adopted by the royal house of Alderaan on the fall of her father, the passing of her mother. With even that little knowledge it is easy enough to follow along the lines of descent, to trace a path to the only son of Leia and her so-named consort: Ben Solo, missing for many a forgotten year, now.

Even before he had met Kylo Ren there had been suspicions, for all many a rumour would be quelled the moment it gained traction or volume. The Supreme Leader has no patience for such speculation, and has exercised his discretion in the form of various creative punishments.

In truth, Hux knew he should not have cared, that he ought to have left such intrigues to those foolish enough to seek the truth beyond the purest logic of a scientific universe. But Hux had read the Tarkin journals, and those more than once. Published in the years following his death and the fall of the Empire, they had become available when Hux himself had been on the cusp of childhood and adolescence. They would have drawn him in even if it had not been for his own background.

In this, he holds shared experience with a man he has idolised from practical infancy – but working with Kylo Ren is an experience utterly unlike that which Tarkin had shared with Vader. There had been some shared respect there. There had been nothing of this posturing, these strange politics.

Nothing of this peculiar passion.

“You like it here.”

He starts, looking away from the vision spread open before him. “Pardon?”

“Starkiller,” Ren says, with unexpected patience. “You like it here.”

“And this surprises you?”

It’s a rhetorical question, and one Ren doesn’t answer. And yet Hux has the uneasy feeling he’s internalised it in some ineffably peculiar way when he shakes his head, asks with simple curiosity, “Do you never consider the consequences of what you are doing?”

The word come quick, easy, rote and remembered for all he has written them himself. “It will bring about the absolute destruction of the beating heart of the New Republic.” Already his voice heightens, sharpens, falls into the rolling rhetoric of an orator long-trained, and talented besides. “This will permit their fall to spread from their deepest centre outward. It is rapid, efficient, and devastating.”

His skill with speech and story has never had any noticeable effect on Ren. It had taken Hux a very long time to admit to himself that it likely never will. “All those lives: gone,” he says, flat. “In one moment.”

“As I said, it is efficient.”

“But you don’t realise the consequence of such catastrophic genocide. Upon the Force.”

Such talk means nothing to him. And yet his skin tightens, contracts, feels as though it is peeling away from sudden smouldering flesh. “If it were actually an issue,” he says, careless and cold, “then I imagine Snoke would hardly have approved any of this.”

And Ren turns his head, so sudden his murmured words are scarcely audible. “I am not certain Snoke can feel it.”

It shouldn’t matter. It is irrelevant; it has no real part in the decisions Hux will make, has already made. And yet he does not ask him to repeat those words, but neither can he ignore that they already exist. He only stares at the form before him, pure black against grey-blue white, his shoulders hunched forward. Something strange and dark twists low in his gut, a blade lodged deeply there, one he does not even remember ever existing before.

“Ren—”

He’s already turning away, shadow slipping back into the encroaching darkness. “Come with me.”

It has snowed again, and recently; the drifts are building up even upon these well-maintained paths. The low hum of the droids that flitter about, clearing the way, beats at the back of his mind as he keeps pace at Ren’s side. It has become apparent enough where they are going.

“The hot pools,” he says, sudden, unable to keep even such inconsequential knowledge to himself. Ren’s pace does not slow, though his head tilts slightly in his direction.

“You have something against them?”

“Well. I do turn to tend a very deep shade of red whenever I spend more than five minutes in one.” And he snorts, drawing the greatcoat tighter about himself. “I can’t say it’s particularly attractive.”

“You think I want you just for your pretty looks?”

There is always something so profoundly odd in hearing Ren’s sense of humour filtered through his vocoder. “I think you don’t actually want to have this conversation,” Hux says, very quiet. And Ren snorts.

“But I _do_.”

And he stops, wonders why it took him this long. “Ren.” When he glances back the way they have come, the droids are gone, and the path is clear and open. “This isn’t a good idea.”

Ren waits, upon the other side. “Why do you say that?”

“We’re very different people.”

“That’s the point.” And when Hux glances back, Ren has already vanished – he’s gone inside, leaving him to stay, or to go.

The hot pools are set into various natural cave systems of the planet, cavernous and largely empty save for the water features themselves. Various facilities exist in the orbit of the command centre, with the bulk and the larger being left to the Stormtroopers and non-enlisted contractors. The officers have their own. And this particular system had been reserved strictly for the commanders and their guests. Hux has rarely enough been inside; perhaps three times, that he can actually recall.

Ren, however, displays an easy familiarity. Hux trails him even as he steps completely through the tiled area with its shelves and lockers; he is in the pool area itself when he begins to strip himself bare, leaving his robes and helmet in dismembered pile upon the cave floor. There’s no shyness to him now, and Hux cannot help the sour thought – _one fuck, and he’s suddenly an expert?_

And his voice, unaltered and natural, echoing from the untouched walls of the cavern, strikes him like a blow. “Are you not going to join me?” One hand extends, his eyes dark deep welcome. “I know you work too hard, General. You need to relax.”

Both hands, still gloved, rise to the collar of his greatcoat. “Well, one of us needs to do our job.” It’s stiff, difficult, unspeakably unattractive, and he knows it. It’s so very rare to him to come to such an encounter feeling so out of place, uncertain of his plans, or those of his partner. He should walk away. He should cut his losses. He should let it go.

But Ren’s lips are curled in faint knowing smile, his dark eyes too bright in the dim ambience. And he turns, moves away; already his dark hair is dampened, curling in the warm thick air. His broad shoulders flex as he bends down, slips into the water. When he turns, the firmness of his chest has his hands twitching, urgent need for touch. And beneath the waterline, Hux knows, will be that glorious cock. He still aches to remember it inside of his own body. And then, too, he remembers all too well the devastating orgasm Ren had wrung from his body – and not just with said cock.

“I don’t want you using the Force on me.”

While he raises an eyebrow, it seems more for show than out of any real surprise. “Why not?” he asks. “You enjoyed it last time.”

With great difficulty he lowers his hands, keeps them still by his side. Even in full uniform, he feels naked before Ren’s opened gaze. “I wasn’t expecting it,” he says, and his lips are numbed, as if they might belong to somebody else. “And now I’ve had time to consider what you did, I don’t want to do it again.”

The dark head tilts, both arms now spread along the lip of the pool. Hux finds himself tracing the curved lines of extended muscle, hungry and helpless. “So what is this?” Ren asks, and Hux’s reply is brutal, almost angry.

“I don’t _know_.”

And with a low snort Ren closes his eyes, leaning his head back to expose the length of his throat in long open invitation. “Just get in the water, Hux.”

To be at such disadvantage is alien to him. But so, too, is the concept of surrender. His hands do not tremble as they work over his buttons, folding each item of clothing with neat spare efficiency. But even as he moves to take the pile in his hands, to place it within one of the few lockers, a snort behind him has him turning. The amusement upon Ren’s face twists his lips into a snarl. The clothing lies nearly as scattered as the hurricane of Ren’s own when Hux slips naked into the water, across from the watchful gaze of Kylo Ren.

“So you want to fuck me?” he asks, lazy, without preamble. And with hands fisted upon the low ledge, Hux smiles, bright and open.

“Yes.”

Ren cocks his head. “So why don’t you come over here and do it?”

There are so many things he might say to that – and many more things that he might _do_. And yet Hux can only close his eyes, knowing again the futility of this strike. “We should never have started this.”

“But we did.” It’s oddly gentle, as liquid as the warmth surrounding his chilled skin. “So come finish it.”

But this will not finish it, and Hux knows that. He suspects Ren knows much the same thing, from the dark glint in his eyes, beyond black in the dim lighting of the pools.

“What do you expect to get from this?” he asks, and isn’t startled to know that he means it. “For me to get my cock in your ass and then magically realise we’re supposed to be together forever?”

He shrugs, water first pooling in, then streaming from the cradle of his collarbones. “Something like that.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“For you, maybe.”

Without thought, a child caught before some nightmare, Hux presses his hands over his face. The rich mineral tang of the water tastes warm against his lips, ferrous and familiar. And he drops his hands, stares at the rippling ruin of his own reflection. He still remembers all too well the final mistake he’d made that first time – in kissing him. He rarely bothers with most of his bedmates, can count almost on one hand the number of times he and Areko have made any effort towards it.

And then he’s crossing the pool, straddling him. The hardness of him, already roused to almost full excitement, presses between their hips and bellies. For the moment, Hux lets it lie, with fingertips digging into jaw and cheek as he forces Ren to look nowhere else but to him alone.

“What are you so afraid of?” Ren whispers, and Hux lets his nails dig deep.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of here.”

Ren laughs, entirely without sound. “Precisely,” he says, and then he’s kissing him, shutting him up, tongue hard and demanding entry. Hux allows it, more from surprise than true willingness. He had figured Ren to be as inexperienced in this as anything else – but he’s oddly responsive, receptive, matching him beat for beat when Hux himself tries to wrest back control of the situation. Overlarge hands curl tight on his hips, hauling him closer still, and Hux should be denying him such liberties.

But he doesn’t, even when those same hands take a more knowing grasp; blunt fingers dip between the cheeks, one fingertip ghosting, grazing over a muscle that flutters in furious response to such play. And Hux breaks the kiss, head back, gasping for air that abruptly seems to have turned to pure vacuum.

“Are you sure you want to fuck me?” Ren asks from beneath him, and jolts his hips upward in vulgar promise. “I can always fuck _you_ , again.”

Hux braces his feet, pulls back; his heated skin feels at least three sizes too small as he rakes a hand back through the ruin of his hair. “Get up there.”

The brutal nod only has Ren smirking as he moves to obey; water sheets from his skin, a glistening nacre of iridescence laid over his skin, as if he really were so much more than mere human. But then, even Hux can admit that this is an extraordinary creature, and one very different from the one he had encountered but days before. There’s almost a swagger to him now as he turns, the curves of his ass on teasing display.

There are towels laid out for use over one of the low daybeds. Ren moves there, turns, eyebrow cocked. “So how do you want me?” he asks, almost sing-song. “Oh my back, thighs spread? Stomach, ass up? Or hands and knees?”

Hux’s lips are pursed, again, as if he is on the parade ground finding fault with every item open to his inspection. “Get on your front. And shut up.”

Ren does so, though the faint chuckle says just what he thinks of such orders. In retaliation Hux reaches for the lube, tightens his hand about the tube until he feels the lid strain at the pressure, even as his fingers lose their tremble. The gel is cold on his fingers, especially after the warmth of the water. Straddling his knees, his own backside resting on the corded muscle of calves, Hux is less than gentle in laying open palms over his ass. The urge to slap one cheek burns hard and fierce, demands fulfilment of such mad desire.

“You can,” Ren says, perfectly lazy, “if that’s what you want.”

A scowl drags his lips down as he moves his fingers, instead, over the furl of muscle between. Beneath him Ren starts; Hux can only be smugly satisfied at having won that round. But Ren is already settling, his entire body giving over to sudden bone-deep relaxation, so very at odds with the stiffness of him the first time. It is but yet another reason to turn away, to walk away. But Hux is already working one finger in, brow furrowed; for a virgin, this is proving strikingly simple.

Within moments he has two fingers in him down to the last knuckle. A third moves in, and then they all move in easy slide. The anger moves with it, amplifying with his every stroke, bitter and burning.

And he crooks his fingers, watches the spine beneath him stiffen in sudden pleasure. “Have you been doing this with somebody else?”

For a moment, Ren seems to have no idea what Hux means; it takes him a long moment to even respond, and he does so only when Hux jabs at his prostate again. “…what?”

“You’ve improved by leaps and bounds, Kylo,” he says, and now he’s stroking that little nub of bright nerves, his voice trembling with dark fury. “You must have been _practising_.”

And his hands are fisting in the towels beneath him, though Hux doesn’t care if it’s from the stimulation or his own rising anger. “You don’t think I know how to conduct a little extracurricular research on my own?”

“It doesn’t seem appropriate to what I know of your personality, no.”

The short chuckle is muffled only somewhat, before Ren turns his head. “I am the apprentice of Master Snoke,” he says, the pronouncement peculiarly profound for a man with three fingers up his ass. “I know much of things you might never understand.”

Hux twists his hand, presses the thumb hard down on the smooth skin between hole and balls; Ren keens beneath him, and he jitters it three times before relenting. “I can’t see where digging up mouldering Sith or Jedi artifacts would have anything to do with locating educational porn on the holonet.”

And he’s breathing hard, but speaking with surprising evenness for all that. “You might be surprised.”

He curls his fingers again, lightly dragging nails deep inside him. “ _Don’t_ surprise me,” he snaps, even as Ren’s held breath escapes on sudden high whine. “This is sex, not spiritualism.”

“Is it?”

It sounds like he’s laughing. Hux wrenches his hand free, leans back. “So you really haven’t been fucking around with somebody else, then?”

Beneath him still, Ren rolls over; now reclined beneath him, chest thrust out and dick hard and leaking, he raises a mocking eyebrow. “Are you jealous?”

“Of course not.”

One hand moves from where it had been splayed over his head; a moment later, and the other joins it. With both hands resting upon Hux’s face and its dire expression, Ren moves upward in sinuous grace, eyes so dark they might as well be the void itself. “Because you should be,” he whispers, and the words echo in both cavern and in mind. “Because I’m yours,” and the words burn against his lips, “because you’re _mine_.”

Hux is very still, and nearly silent. “I think this has gone far enough.”

“No.” And he’s smiling, even as his eyes are the terrible blackness of total ending. “We need to go so much _further_.”

They’re kissing, again. A moment of madness is all he allows before Hux bites down, and hard. Rocking back, Ren ignores the blood on his chin, and his smile wide and bright.

“Keep going,” he taunts. “We have so much ground to cover, yet.”

It is definitely time to walk away. But instead: a hard slap, Ren’s head snapping to the side. And there’s laughter, too, even as he fists his hair, forces him around, forces him down. They both know Ren allows it. Hux still wants to fight for every last breath.

His cock is achingly hard, has a will of its own. It’s one he gives over to as he pushes in to the crucible of that great body, thrumming with heat and preternatural energy. But there he holds the moment, one stilled and strange. Ren allows it – Ren _welcomes_ it, and that alone is why Hux lets go his hair, and braces upon his forearms, with feet between his ankles, and then: he pistons inward, forcing upward.

While Hux says scarcely a word, permits himself only the sounds of ragged breath and slapping skin, Ren is hardly silent; his voice bounces off the rock in relentless self-replicating echo, too alive, too vibrant, too earthy by half. And he clenches, too as if to hold him in on every inward stroke. Wrenching back, Hux moves faster, harder, denies Ren this last thing that he wants. Beneath it all the daybed creaks in alarmed protest; then there’s a groaning crack, and one leg gives way. A moment later, and the whole side collapses, canting over to spill them both upon the tiled floor. Ren looms over him, dark hair wild, face pale bone-shadow.

“We’re not done yet.” He climbs into his lap, taking his cock in hand; Hux almost comes off there, biting his lip to bleeding. But Ren is a force of terrible focused nature, hands on his shoulders, eyes on his, rising and falling and taking everything he wants, all that Hux had not wished to give.

His come spills hot on his stomach, Ren’s face pressed to the space between shoulder and jaw. But he is not still, shuddering and shivering even as one hand moves backward, tracing the place where they join. There he forms a ring of fingers, with barely any space to move. Somehow it’s enough, with the rhythmic contraction of his body inviting Hux to spill deeply there. It’s not the high of before, when Ren had worked his mind far beyond the merest pleasures of the body. But it’s still something strange, something new.

Something dangerous.

Ren says nothing when he rises, then moves away. Hux has the distinct impression he feels as though he does not need to. He keeps his own counsel as he watches, thankful that Ren does not enter the pools again. He instead disappears into small hidden alcove that houses a shower stall, one they both should have used beforehand.

But protocol hardly seems to be what any of this is about, anymore. If it ever was.

When he comes back, mere moments later, his hair is slicked back to reveal the peculiarity of his oversized ears, the strange lines of his unusual skull. Hux is aware Ren had built his own lightsaber; sometimes he wonders if he’d been forced to construct his own helmet, too, given the absolute peculiarities of his body entire.

He’s forgone clothes, even a towel – all he’s brought back with him is a warmed, damp facecloth held in one hand. Without words he goes to his knees at Hux’s side, he begins to move it gentle over the skin of thighs and groin. Over-sensitised skin leaps, twitches; Ren snorts, drifting light fingers as if quietening a skittish draft animal.

“You’re right,” he muses, and presses down just hard enough to hurt. “You _do_ look like you’ve been boiled alive.”

And Hux is sitting up, shoving back. “Shut up, Ren.”

He leans back on his heels, still gloriously naked; Hux very deliberately does not look at where his cock rests between the corded muscles of his thighs, does not see how it already hardens again. “It doesn’t end here,” Ren says, as if nothing else in the galaxy could ever be true. And Hux sets his jaw, hardens his gaze.

“It should.”

“But it doesn’t.” With hands pressed to thighs, Ren levers himself upward; his grace is a remarkable mismatch to the oddity of his gangling body. “With that said, you need to learn to accept it.” Now he pauses, one hand halfway through his hair. “We’re always going to be at odds with each other. It’s just how we are.” And he shakes his head, sounds almost exasperated when he adds, “But you still need to accept this.”

He raises his chin in clear challenge. “And if I don’t?”

Ren has never been impressed by Hux’s achievements. Perhaps it is only fair, given Hux has never once been cowed by his preternatural skills. “You either have all of me,” he says, very low, “or you have none of me.”

He snorts, fingers fisting in the damp towel beneath him. “That is the worldview of a child.”

“And yours is that of a non-believer.” His clothes rise from the floor with no physical interaction, come to rest in his hands. “So come back to me when you’re ready to believe in something new. Something _real_.”

And Ren wears his own mad belief like a second shadow, letting it trail behind him as he matches his every step away from Hux. Left alone, Hux holds his silence, and his thoughts. But even in the heat of the cavernous room, deep within beloved Starkiller, he shivers.

 

*****

 

There are endless problems with Starkiller. This in and of itself does not trouble Hux; with a project so innovative and unique, such setbacks are inevitable. He will work through them. He will solve them. Starkiller will be completed, and she will be _beautiful_.

But his patience, never a raging river to begin with, has dammed itself very nearly to drought. Even with Ren largely absent, and with him the inimitable disasters the man alone might create, the general’s stress levels run high. But despite the demands of the base construction, constant communiques with high command, and the responsibilities of overseeing a star destroyer, Hux has managed to have Phasma to himself long enough to ask her what she had made of the Ottegan assault.

She stands before him, a console lit up between them to illustrate the breakdown of resources lost and gained during her squadron’s deployment. “My understanding was that they had divined the location of Luke Skywalker,” she says, voice even modulation behind the mask. “And then they had given this information to another. Ren is apparently searching for said individual before the data can be transferred to the Resistance.”

“Skywalker,” he says, the word unfamiliar and strange upon his tongue. “But why does it _matter_?”

Such strange outburst garners no reaction from her – not that her armour or helmet would allow for it. Unlike Ren, who broadcasts his tempers and moods through even his unwieldy costume, Phasma is an automaton in chrome uniform. “He did great damage to the old Empire,” she says, the textbook response even and honestly given. “I assume Leader Snoke wants to neutralise all threats, no matter how mythical said threats might be said to be.”

And he turns away from the blaze of the holoscreen; only three ‘troopers had been lost, with minimal damage done to the carriers and escorting TIEs, but the urge to drive his fist through even that has him bunching both his hands beneath the hang of his coat. “I haven’t got time for this,” he says, and mild as it is, Phasma’s head gives an almost imperceptible shake.

“You need to work this off, Hux.”

He turns, eyes narrowed, lips thinned. “What?”

Her eyes, masked as they are, never once move from his own. “You are overstressed. You know it as well as I do.” She pauses, just a moment. “Go to one of the training rooms. Let it out. It is the one of the simplest ways, and certainly one of the quickest.”

He doesn’t bother to contain his snort. “Are _you_ offering to spar with me, then?”

“I’d break you. And that’s not what you need right now.” And perhaps there is the faintest hint of humour to her words now when she adds, “Break a few non-essential items of equipment instead. You can always blame it on Ren and then tag it on to his latest requisition form.”

That shakes loose a startled bark of something close to laughter. Already, something of the band of terrible pain that has crowned his temples for the last two cycles has begun to lift. “…you are terrible.”

“We all are.” And her gauntleted hand is surprisingly light upon his shoulder; he has seen her crush the throats of rebels and insurgents with the very same grip. “But we need you at your best level of terrible, General. Get it out of your system, and then come back to us.”

All comfort becomes cold in that sudden second, the crawling sensation of those words burning upon his skin as if a brand. But it is sense that shakes it away, and it is perspective that has him accepting her advice for what it truly is. “You always do give good counsel, Captain.”

With a nod, she takes her own dismissal; like her general, the captain always has her places to be. With datapad tucked firmly into one pocket of his greatcoat, and comm switched to silent, Hux moves with undisturbed purpose towards one of the officer’s gyms. And it’s easy enough to clear it of the few others there now, mid-shift as it is. He is their ultimate commanding officer, after all.

Hux has never been particularly inclined towards physical exertion, but its use and importance have both been truths trained into him from a very young age – a military brat born, an imperial exile bred, and now a general at the impossible age of thirty-four. While he might not be out in the fray swinging around some archaic plasma weapon, he must maintain a certain standard of fitness.

In the locker room he strips away his uniform, stores it neatly in a locker he sets to his own random code. He doesn’t maintain a specific one of his own, had no need to; there is always a selection of anonymous workout clothes in the fresh laundry pile for the use of all enlisted personnel. Hux selects a sleeveless shirt, loose trousers, no shoes.

When dressed, he moves out into the silent arena, eyes already fixed upon his goal. He could make use of any of the machines; often enough, he chooses only the treadmills, finding the repetitive beat of feet against the belt almost soothing, matching it to the military rhythm of his own pounding heart. He’s never had been the type to build generous muscle, and has long ago given it up as a lost cause; the weight machines therefore hold little interest for him.

But it is the sparring area that summons him today. Phasma might not be here now, but the bags fixed to the ceiling by sturdy chains: they are opened invitation. Like all officers, Hux has extensive basic training in hand to hand combat, for all it was used more for show and for competition than actual military engagement. Excelling in those classes had proved almost too easy for him. Mostly because as the commandant’s son, it was a common extra-curricular activity – and more for the pleasure than mere preservation, by the end of his formal schooling.

In a state close almost to reverie, one of muscle memory rather than active thought, Hux binds his hands and wrists. With a fighting stance assumed before a chosen bag, Hux fixes his gaze upon the rich faux leather, and finds himself at dire pause. It would be childish to picture it as Kylo Ren’s face, particularly as Hux is perfectly willing to admit this situation is as much his own fault as it is Ren’s. Instead, the bag is everything, and it is nothing.

Hux, ever the great accountant of time and people and materials, loses track of everything then. In some dim part of his mind he knows pain, and he knows pleasure; both seem to be of no consequence, now. His hands move, too fast, too hard; there’s the taint of hot blood, his head pounding, his heart threatening to beat its furious way right out of his aching chest. Somewhere, perhaps, he wonders at the sensation of shoulders tearing at the joints. But it doesn’t seem to matter. He can’t hear anything, but there’s still something like laughter in the air around him, and he just doesn’t care.

And then: it all stops. He pulls forward to land a blow, and then another.  But there is no movement. He cannot _move_. And it makes no sense, it is impossible and it is wrong – and then he knows. And then: he _roars_.

“Ren!” It rattles him from inside out, his ragged body held together only by will and by fury. “Let me _go_!”

But he does not. Rather, he glides in three broad steps to come around before Hux as if he is but some great preternatural beast, and there Ren stands silent. The dark head is cowled, but without the helmet; still his face remains half-masked in chiaroscuro shadow. And he blinks those damnable dark eyes, just once.

Hux’s lips twist, and though he strains to hold their civility, each word might as well have been spat in his face. “Snoke has forbidden you from using your powers on me.”

Another blink, so very close to a shrug. “You are doing yourself considerable harm.” And his lips twitch, something like laughter, something like curiosity. “I’d call these extenuating circumstances.”

Hux surges forward again, every muscle alight and burning; he gains not one inch, not one ounce of movement save for the quickening breath of aching lungs. “Let me go,” he hisses, teeth clenched, jaw pulled back to leave only a sneer behind. “ _Now_.”

Ren steps forward, eyes now narrowed, head tilted. And his gloved hands rise, fingertips in slow ghost over the ruin of his own.

“This must be attended to.”

Hux snorts, even as those immobile aching hands wish for nothing more than to slap themselves across that bloody face. “I _did_ notice.”

“Actually, I don’t think you did.” The release comes sudden, unannounced; Hux stumbles forward, gifted momentum thrusting him straight into the unmoving object that is Ren’s broad chest. But before he can break himself there, Ren catches him by his upper arms, holds him still and close.

“You need to go to the medbay.”

If not for the grip about his biceps, leaving bruises there like purple-black sleeve garters, Hux would have indulged in that slap. As it is, only pure common sense keeps him from kneeing him in the groin. “Do you always state the obvious?”

“Only when someone is determined to not otherwise acknowledge it, yes.”

To his surprise, when he yanks himself back, Ren lets go. “I’m going to the medbay. Get out of my way.”

He does – but also, he follows. Hux ignores him, despite having the bitter knowledge that that this does not mean Ren will actually go away. But dignity insists he returns first to the locker room to retrieve his uniform. The ruin of his hands, however, barely permits him to key in his code without biting back a scream.

Ren does not touch him. Ren barely comes near him. But as he reaches in to the locker for his trousers, lip bit nearly to bleeding beneath his teeth, a sudden wave of dizziness threatens to send him to the floor. The sensation of his hands has become a peculiar thing, prickling and burning and _bright_. And then – it is a loss of _all_ sensation, leaving him fumbling with hands that have no feeling whatsoever, for all he remains in direct control of motion and movement.

It feels as though a stranger dresses him. But the eyes that watch him from behind are familiar in what feels too many senses indeed. As he slings the greatcoat over his shoulders, Hux makes for the exit, and does not stop to thank him. They have moved far beyond that, now.

Very few people pay them any heed, for all they must be a sight for even a crew trained to be discreet: the hulking knight, trailing the general with bloodied hands. Hux can only suppose it is Ren’s doing. It roils inside him, bitter burning heat, but he keeps it to himself, here on the outside. Once on the inside of the medbay, commandeering one of the private rooms, he allows his annoyance to rise, dismissing the tech with a curt order: “Summon a droid.”

“Don’t summon a droid.” Though Hux’s head snaps around, eyes, blazing, the tech watches only Ren, dim-eyed and rapt. “Go. I will attend to the General myself.”

He could protest. It’s on the very tip of his tongue to do so. But the woman leaves without even looking back, and Hux is left only with Ren himself.

“You need to leave.”

“I must stay.” Ren doesn’t even do him the courtesy of a face to face conversation; he’s turned so he might rummage through one of the supply cabinets. Even with the cowl lowered and gloves removed, he still strikes an incongruous figure, and not one that would engender much faith even when he comes back to Hux with what appears adequate supplies.

“Sit down.”

He’d tighten the greatcoat at his throat, could he move his own fingers properly. “I’m not a ‘trooper to be ordered about.”

“No. But you _are_ the General.” The gaze fixed upon him now has power behind it, should compel him to take his seat. But he doesn’t even when Ren adds, “And you need to be well.”

After that, Ren says nothing. He only watches. And Hux, as scientifically inclined as his own mind is, can _feel_ it – the gathering of the Force about him, dark sparking energy worn about him like a living shroud. It should be impossible. And yet, if he were to reach out his hand, he cannot be sure it would not burn.

He purses his lips, meets Ren’s eyes with chin tilted upward before he sits down, useless hands out in frank demand. That strange numbness remains, and he cannot decide if he is bitter or glad.

Ren’s own hands rise in answer, so overlarge and clumsy by design, but Hux has seen them about their work. They are deft and knowing as they gentle Hux’s clawed fingers to straightness, examining the damage wrought there. There are no broken bones, but extensive contusions and bruising tattoo his skin from tip to wrist. Ren binds both hands in thin bacta, his work neat and spare. Then he raises them afterwards, to the light. And Hux frowns to see the result. He should be able to wear even his carefully fitted gloves over such delicate effort.

“It appears you actually know what you are doing.”

The words, granted like a king offering thanks to some unexpected artisan, is met with dry words. “I do have extensive practice in such matters, Hux.”

That has him lowering his hands, asking a question before he even realises he genuinely wants its answer. “Do you often attend to your own wounds, then?”

“It is simpler.” He tilts his dark head, eyes alight with something that could only be humour. “As you probably know yourself.”

Ren wears his mask because he wears all his emotions on his mobile features, ever-changing and mercurial. And without that mask between them, Hux must turn away, must give over to silence. It leaves only the hum of the great machine around them, a living creature they need to survive, here in the black. A monstrous creation they themselves are parasitic upon.

“I need a cigarette.”

Ren intercepts his reach forward, fingers gentle bracelet about his wrist. “In the medbay?” he asks, clearly amused. Hux shakes his wrist free, finds he cannot.

“Shut up,” he says, and tries again. Ren’s grip tightens, his great body moving forward until his face is but a moment from Hux’s own.

“There are better addictions you could indulge in.”

He turns to meet his gaze, sharp and close enough to gut them both. “This is not an _addiction_.”

The breath on his lips tastes of snow, and impossibly, of fire. “It might as well be.”

He takes his lips in uninvited kiss, too sure, too certain. One hand moves up in reflexive protest – but the second it braces upon his chest, the world erupts in a sudden explosion of agony. Yanking it back, hissing, gasping, Hux glances up to find only Ren’s faint, terrible smile.

“ _Bastard_.”

The smile only widens. “Probably. Technically.” It’s dangerously close to pity when he adds, soft, “I suppose, of all people, _you’d_ understand.”

His right foot kicks out, is evaded by a neat sidestep. But it is no retreat, for when Ren returns, he does so with the full force of an invading army; his hands slam down on his shoulders, shove Hux down and against the gurney, its flimsy construction groaning as he clambers up to loom over him.

Hux, now very still, chooses the one defence that might actually have some success. “Ren.”

With his hair hanging wild, pupils dilated to the point where they have annexed his eyes iris entire, Ren almost smiles. “Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

And he sighs, as if Hux is a child stubbornly refusing to learn the one lesson that actually matters. “What we both need to do,” he says, and then his lips seek out his once more. “What we both _want_ to do.”

The weight of him is a terrible and tempting thing. He’s always known it to be his weakness – and his only partner over the last three years has been Areko, a man who is close to Hux’s own weight but lacks his height. In contrast to that, it is so easy to revel in the broadness, the bulk of the bold creature now pressed to him the entire length of his trembling body.

“This can only lead to disaster,” he whispers into Ren’s lips, and the damned man is laughing when he pulls back.

“It will be worse disaster if we are not together,” he says, one hand rising, pressing back the damp riot of hair from his forehead. “Why do you think Snoke keeps us apart?”

Hux goes very still. “What?”

And now Ren frowns, something like complaint painted rough across the bizarre canvas of his features; he seems almost irritated to have to explain himself, even as he does. “He doesn’t approve,” he says, eventually, fingers working over the buttons of jacket, of the shirt underneath it. And he frowns deeper, even as his eyes light up to have Hux’s chest bare before him. “Because he _knows_.”

With Ren’s head now held between his hands, much as he cannot bring pressure to bear on either of them, Hux has almost forgotten the press of that cursed dick to his thigh. “ _What_ does he know?”

“That I am stronger when I have purpose.” He surges against him, fierce sudden storm. “Be my purpose, Hux,” he murmurs, with terrible frank yearning, “and I will give you yours.”

Thrusting him back, more with forearms than ruined hands, Hux stares, even as Ren glares mutinously back. For all he lies upon his back, Hux feels to be standing upon a precipice – to be teetering upon the edge of everything he has ever wanted.

“I already have a purpose,” he says, very slow, very careful. Ren actually rolls his eyes, leaning forward with all the grace of a predator set to rip out the throat of its cornered prey.

“Do you?” A kiss, pressed to his throat; Hux winces, turns his face away. “But did you choose it for yourself?”

“Of course I did.”

“Of _course_ you did.” Lightly mocking, now, Ren presses three kisses to his collarbone, neat quick line to match the quicksilver beat of his heart. “The commandant’s son,” he says, lips over his carotid pulse, “is now a general.” His tongue traces downward, circles around one nipple. “An exile who spent his whole life aboard star destroyers,” and his teeth grip it but lightly, “now lives still upon the same damn thing.”

With his hands so useless, Hux cannot go far; he is shaking as he yanks himself barely a half inch up the bed, lips pressed so close as to be bloodless. Still he can feel the ghost of Ren’s mouth, all over his skin; there is no way the bastard could have become so talented from one or two fucks.

“The _Finalizer_ is the most advanced ship of her kind,” he says, because he cannot help himself; Ren props himself on one hand, gives him a look halfway between exasperated and fond.

“Of course she is.”

Squirming, now, undignified as he knows the motion is, Hux goes nowhere. “I know what I am doing,” he says, and experimentally twitches one thigh to see if he might bring it up in swift motion. “And I know exactly where I am going.”

With one fingertip, Ren traces lazy circles at the very centre of his chest. “You think you do,” he says, and one hand moves down, clenches tight about the top of Hux’s right leg. “But I can show you the real way.”

Hux gives up any semblance of subtlety. “Get _off_ me!”

This time he grits his teeth, accepts he must use his own hands, no matter how agonising, to claw himself back his freedom. But even as he sets his jaw Ren pushes him back – with his own hands, not the Force.

And beneath, eyes burning, chest tight, Hux has only his words as weapons. “Are you saying, then,” Hux spits, “that you chose yourself this path _you’re_ now on?”

And Ren shakes his head, almost sad, as if he pities Hux his blindness. “I followed my calling, and it brought me here.” He leans back, his smile too gentle. “And now, it’s calling me to _you_.”

Hux closes his eyes. “This cannot be.”

“It already is.”

And Hux watches, silent, as Ren begins to divest himself of the endless layers that envelop him. But unlike Hux, who becomes so much smaller out of uniform, Ren remains broad and true. And then he’s stripping him bare, careful of the ache of his hands. When he is done he even lifting them, pressed reverent to his generous lips, soft and warm beneath the darkness of his impossible eyes.

“How did you expect to work like this?” he whispers, and Hux can barely speak around the tangle of his throat, and his thoughts.

“They’ll be better by morning.”

Another kiss, far too soft. “I could make them better now.”

“No, you couldn’t.”

“Oh, Hux,” he says, almost pitying, almost apologetic, “you have no idea of the things I could do, for you.”

And they’re kissing, again, Ren over him. It’s far too intimate; even with Areko, Hux does not allow this level of indulgence. Not that Areko would even ask for it. Ren just takes. But then he _gives_ , too, because he’s moving down, hands gentling thighs apart, his tongue flicking curious over his standing cock.

And again, that fury, rising in his blood. “There must have been _somebody_ ,” he hisses, and he wishes nothing more than to fist his hands in that dark hair, to yank his head back until his throat strains around a scream. Instead he kicks out with one foot, catches Ren a glancing blow upon one shoulder. “Who _was_ it?”

And Ren sits back; his expression has turned troubled, almost hurt. “There has been no-one else.” His hands, open palmed, gentle over his thighs, too warm. “It could only be this way with you.”

“You’re a fool.”

He actually smiles. “You’d hardly be the first to say so.” He flickers his tongue out, dances it along the great vein along the length of his cock; even as Hux gasps, he gives him a wicked grin. “Though few are permitted the chance to say so twice.”

Hux turns his eyes to the ceiling. “Yet I’m still here.”

“And so am I.”

These are whispered treasons, and his cock in the mouth of the one who had spoken them. The implications are disastrous, and yet Hux cannot even begin to collate what Ren has implied, has outright said. And it’s impossible, besides; Hux has ambitions, yes. But he is a general, and he has taken this rank by skill alone. He needs no sorcery to reach as far as his arm might extend. The final prize will be his for the taking. He needs no-one to lift him up towards what is already rightfully his.

And one hand cradles his balls, pushes them gently up. The warmth against his hole has his abdomen spasming, fingers tightening to fists even as the pain and pleasure both punch his breath right out of his chest.

“ _Kylo_!”

And he looks up, curious, lips puffy and damp. “Do you not like this?”

“I—” It’s not something he is gifted often. He can’t lie about his fondness for the act, much less deny its application when offered. “…you surprised me.”

He catches his lower lip beneath his upper teeth, looks almost coy – and Ren has always looked young, but in that moment Hux feels as if he has seen for himself just what Ben Solo had actually looked like. “I feel like it’s a particular talent that I have, maybe.”

Something aches in him now, when he turns his face away. “If you want to call it that.”

“I do.”

A sigh escapes, as pointless as further refusal. With his hands so incapacitated, he cannot stop him. He could not have stopped Ren even had he been entirely fit for purpose.

_But you’re not even trying_.

It is a complete reversal of their first encounter: Hux is laid out before Ren, who now takes his time exploring. But he knows what he is doing. And, again, the thought eats him alive: Ren cannot possibly have learned such skill from the trash on the holonet.

“Are you in my head?” he asks, and rather than accusation, it’s almost – resigned. And Ren licks so carefully at him, before moving upward, lying across him again.

“I’m everywhere,” he says, very slow, and Hux sighs.

“A comforting thought.”

“It should be.”

And there’s a hand around his cock, working him to hardness; Hux pushes his hips up into it, even as he sighs again. “I don’t believe in any of this.”

“You don’t have to.” Ren shifts, his lips against his throat. “Not when it believes in _you_.”

When Ren relents at last, moving into him, Hux loops his arms around his neck, quite without thought. The acceptance has Ren rocking into him; legs up, the widening motion only drawing him all the deeper. It’s too gentle. It should be teeth and nails and weight and hissed words. But it is only gasping breath, and strange pleasure.

“You can deny it all you want. It will still happen.” Ren rocks deeper. “When it is meant to.”

“Is that a threat?”

“And a promise.” He nips his lip, uses his nose to encourage Hux’s face back around. “From the very bottom of my heart.”

It takes all his considerable will to meet Ren’s gaze – and his eyes seem to fill the galaxy. It is undoubtedly some trickery of the Force, and he should bring all that he is to bear against it. Snoke had trained him against such invasions of his mind. But then, Hux has not been trained against _this_. He doesn’t even know that it would be possible. Hux has seen Ren about his work, but this is something different. That is a violation; that is distilled violence, pure and invading. This is instead an invitation. This is an invocation.

This is being consumed.

Hux becomes vaguely aware of the distant sensation of heat, pooling upon his belly. But in his mind he remains anchored, something removed and resplendent. Ren exists all around him, within him; the power of him thrums through body and thought alike. In him, Hux knows he has found a destructive power far greater than even his own creation – because _Ren_ is creation, as much as he is devastation. Ren is light and Ren is dark; Ren is deepest shadow even as he is also the great blinding light that allows it to be cast at all.

Hux surrenders. It is the only option left open to him. Time is lost; something else is gained. But when he opens his eyes, body aching, mind hard and awkward, he finds Ren seated on the edge of the bed, fully dressed and now staring into space. But even that is not as strange as his hands – when he raises them, it is to find both unbandaged. Unharmed.

His voice trembles, and he can do not a thing about it. “What did you _do_?”

“I fixed you.”

His skin crawls, as if it wishes nothing more than to strip itself free from his bones, to leave him naked and bleeding and opened to the monster before him. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”

And Ren clenches his eyes shut, his hands curled to fists. “You _did_.” And for a moment, Hux cannot breathe – the air is thick, bitter, and his vision clouds, turns white and harsh; his teeth hum with repressed energy, his groin tight, dick already traitorously stirring between his thighs. And then Ren shakes his head and it as if an airlock has given way; the pressure drops, his face turned down to the sudden tangle of his fingers. “But maybe you don’t remember,” he whispers, and Hux set his jaw so hard he hears it crack.

“No.” And his hands reach for the anchoring edge of the gurney, faint and fluttering support against such unnatural force. “ _No_.”

His eyes are so dark. Too dark. Even black holes don’t seem as ravenous as they do. “ _Hux_.”

And he turns away, even as he does not know that he has entirely escaped the fall across such impossible event horizon. “I can’t do this.” He’s standing and he’s shaking; only when his fingers close about the familiar harshness of his uniform do they regain any semblance of calm, of order. And only when he is done does he look up, to the hunched shadow still seated at the far end of their borrowed bed.

“This can’t happen again.”

Ren draws a shaking breath; somewhere, Hux feels something break, and does not even know what it is. “Why not?”

“It’s – I can’t _do_ this.” And he digs into his pocket, closes his gloved hand about the datapad still hidden there. “I have work to do.”

Again, Ren moves too quick, too sudden; he’s standing before him, one hand upon his cheek, too close to escape now. “Go, then. Build your little toy,” he whispers, eyes as dark as pitch. “Then, when you know what’s more important – you come back to me.” His lips twitch, as though they have forgotten exactly how to smile. “I’ll be waiting.”

Hux swallows, hard. It doesn’t go down; he speaks around the lump of it, half-strangled, still firm. “Don’t,” he advises. “I won’t come.” And he straightens his shoulders, feels the crack of the datapad’s tortured screen. “I already have my own path.”

Something _moves_ , in the air around them – Hux has no other word for it. He cannot see it, cannot even entirely sense it. But something shifts in Kylo Ren: it stiffens his spine, darkens his eyes, leaves his voice low and empty. “Then I have no use for you,” he says, and his lips curl back from his teeth. “If you will not _see_.”

“Ren—”

But he is walking away. And he does not look back. And Hux finds for a sharp second that all air has escaped him, that he cannot _breathe_ —

He closes his eyes, and the spell is broken. If that is even what it was. And he can feel the slivers of the datapad cutting through even his leather gloves, pricking him back to reality. He won’t look back, either. Not with so much now open before them all.

 

*****

 

They are hanging in space, Starkiller spread out beneath them – so very close to completion. So very close to her consummation. A mere handful of days, and he will use her to bring down the worst of the excesses of the regime that drove his own people to exile.

“It didn’t work out,” he says, calm, quiet, a field report given to a fellow commander. Upon the screen before him, centred perfectly upon his desk, Areko clucks his tongue, shakes his silvered head.

“Pity.” There’s something almost wistful to him as he raises his teacup, takes a light sip before setting it down again. “He would have been quite the useful ally, given the degree of his obsession with you.”

Hux can feel the man’s eyes upon him, but his own remain upon Starkiller. The taste of bitter ash upon his tongue, thick and smoky, should make it difficult to speak clearly. He does so anyway. He is a general of the First Order. He knows his place. “You don’t know anything about it. Or him, for that matter.”

“And you believe that you do?”

There is no insult taken in the question, only genuine curiosity. And Hux closes his eyes, though but briefly. It had been amusing, once. To find himself in the orbit of a man who exists beyond the rigours of command and pure dedication. “I tested a hypothesis. It yielded no useful result. So I am ending the experiment, and feel no need to indulge in it again.”

There’s a brief silence, now. Hux continues to gaze out beyond the transparisteel. The view will be different enough, soon. Jakku: that cursed place of sand and miserable defeat, for all Hux doesn’t believe in ghosts or in magic. But it is the place where the Empire fell lowest, fell hardest. Perhaps it is only right their rise should begin anew in that damned graveyard.

 “I will be coming soon to Starkiller,” Areko says, light, sudden. “I received your _personal_ invitation, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Shall we have dinner together?” And he pauses, just a moment. “The night before.”

At last Hux turns, and he even means the regret with which he says, “I think not.”

One eyebrow rises. “Oh?”

His gloved hands lace before his chin, his eyes blue-green steel. “Preparations will be hectic.” And he flickers his hand to the viewport, for all the angle will not allow for Areko to see anything save the general himself. “Ren is also neck-deep in planning some operation that has the _Finalizer_ co-opted for his needs at the drop of his fool helmet. There’s little time for indulgence.”

He blinks, twice, rapid. “Surely just a _little_.”

“Not enough.” And his hand is reaching for the disconnect. “But I’ll see you. On the plaza.” And he smiles, the words of his speech as always a mantra at the back of his mind. “When it is operational.”

Areko leans back, though it’s not quite surrender. “I’ll be there. With bells on, as it were.”

A light snort escapes, with no true amusement underlying its sound. “There’s no need for theatrics, Randel.”

“And here I thought you rather enjoyed those.”

He gives a light shrug, depresses the button. “I feel as if I’ve lost my taste for them, these days.”

But he hasn’t. With the holoscreen darkened to silence, Hux returns to the work upon his datapad, giving the order to prepare for the planned hyperspace jump. It is some hours before he leaves his office, stepping quick and sharp towards the end of the bridge. There he stares out across the stars, to the desert planet arrayed before him. It is place of dark endings, he thinks, of perfect beginnings in a play that will rewrite the tale of this galaxy entire.

No, he hasn’t lost his taste for theatrics, at all.

And as he turns to watch Kylo Ren’s approach, he wonders if perhaps that is not the heart of their problem.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...so. Um. I managed to trick my brain into writing the last part, though the ending's so bloody open-ended that there's like a whole frickin' _novel_ in there, somewhere. But this is where I got to, so. Here it is.
> 
> I just have to say a massive THANK YOU to everyone who has encouraged this crazy story to this point, and I'm also amazed and so glad that Areko grew on people. I mean, he's an expy of Landa so possibly that's only natural, but he...kind of took off on me. He wasn't supposed to have this much influence over Hux and Kylo's disastrous relationship, but oops. There it is.
> 
> As always, a special thank you to @epiccuppycakes, who reminds me of all the filthy things Areko wants to do with both Hux AND Kylo, and who gracefully named Areko's star destroyer when I gave her the opportunity. Also, @ottenebrare continues to be the best, drawing [this absolutely wonderful picture of Areko and a "gift" for Hux](https://ottenebrare.tumblr.com/post/153091685187/heres-a-quick-very-silly-drawing-of-admiral#notes). Ha. It's Kylo's worst nightmare, indeed. <3
> 
> Also, this chapter's Word .doc is named [_God In His Culture_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZfSFXdDJFA), because that song _hurts_. But I was also listening to [_Pan_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Z_dUhujoU) as I edited, and...well. It's Hux's song, even though this part is from Kylo's POV. And I've never really written Kylo post-TFA before. His mind is a terrible crumbling place, and it was a hell of a ride. But I think he came through. I hope he came through. Have a read, and see what you think. <3

He has never been able to bear a bacta tank. The first time he’d been forced into the depths of one, he’d been barely fourteen. It had been a bad crash in a racer belonging to one of his father’s Five Sabers protégées. Said crash had resulted in the complete destruction of the plane; Ben himself had survived only due to his fierce alignment with the Force. But it hadn’t been as if he’d come through miraculously untouched. He’d just been lucky not to come through dead.

In many ways it has been more of the same thing, this time around. The Force had thrummed through him, bright and blazing and _demanding_ ; even with the bowcaster wound, Kylo had not been removed from the battle. In fact, the wound had even made it easier, had made it better: the crystallising clarity of perfect agony. And whenever he’d forgotten, whenever reality had threatened, a balled fist had been all he needed. He’d pounded deeper, harder, faster: and when the blood soaked his sides, dripping down one thigh to pool in his boot, he’d known that he would never fail. Not with the Force behind each ever desperate step.

And now, it has all come to nothing. His father lies dead, evaporated with Starkiller itself. He is never coming back. But everything still _hurts_ , and it is not the agony that had previously led him further than the limits thrust upon those who do not have his power. Kylo Ren has the Force at his fingertips. But despite how he has clawed, demanded more: it has still not brought him close _enough_. Something, some vital and visceral part of it, remains ever beyond his reach. Once, he had once believed Hux could bridge that distance, though the general had proven a less than reliable conduit. And then, Snoke’s promise that the severance of the connection to Solo—

There’s a groaning sound, animalistic and terrible. Only when Kylo rocks himself upright does he realise that the pathetic sound emanates from his own treacherous ruin of a body. And there, hunched over, his skin three sizes too small and his bones full of broken glass, blood but a molten river through the ruin of his nervous system, Kylo stares at his shaking hands. This is not a bacta tank. He hadn’t allowed them to put him in a bacta tank.

_I don’t **need** a bacta tank._

He turns his eyes blearily towards the exit, mouth already tightening, ignoring the strain of skin over the scarcely-healed slash the scavenger girl carved into his face. That did not matter. He has to train. He has to be _ready_. While memory is a strange and shifting thing, now, Kylo cannot forget that Hux had told him they were going to Snoke. That he had been sent back out to collapsing Starkiller, to collect him at Snoke’s demand.

And that had hurt more than the Wookiee’s wound, the slash the girl had cast as a brand across his face. To be on his back in the snow and the dark, to be waiting for death – and to be called back to look up into those cold blue eyes and see only scornful distance. Hux had not come because destiny had demanded it of him. He’d come because he had been raised to obey the orders of those above him, and the Supreme Leader held absolute command over the First Order.

That had been the first time Kylo had said he would not go in the tank. Hux had replied he’d go wherever he was damn well told. His vision and memory had greyed out then, returned only when the shuttle shuddered and screamed, valiantly making its hyperspace jump to the co-ordinates where the _Finalizer_ had already retreated. Kylo had found himself on his back, bundled onto some hard cold surface he could not even quite even identify the true nature of. Hux had been standing over him, looming as silent as the shadows gathering at the edges of his mind. And Kylo had had expected him to turn, to walk away, to abandon him now as he had abandoned all Kylo had offered him, before.

Time must have passed, because the next thing he recalled was Hux nudging one fallen arm with a lean thigh. “Get up.” He’d quirked an eyebrow, though there had been no amusement to the cool cut of his eyes, or the prim set of his lips. “That is, unless you _want_ to suffer the indignity of being carried through the corridors by the ‘troopers like a sack of spoiled grain.”

Kylo had risen then, as if from the dead. As he had lurched through the corridors, heaving with staff and survivors both, he had wondered if death would be like this: stumbling at the side of a man who would not look anywhere but forwards. And but days beforehand, that same man had known him body and mind. Had opened him wide, had devoured everything that he was, and still had asked for more.

But that Hux had long vanished. It had left Kylo with but the half-ruin of him: hair full of soot and snow, greatcoat and gloves bloodied, his words little more than barked order and sharp reprimand to those unfortunate enough to note their passing. For his part Kylo had only stared, blinded agony. He tripped, more than once. He should have fallen, but somehow never managed to. Yet he has no memory now of Hux ever having touched him at all.

It had hurt more than any wound he’d taken when Hux had left him there, at the entrance to the medbay. Even before he could ask why, Hux had rolled his eyes, grimacing at what little he could parse of his reflection in the transparisteel divider between room and staff area. “The Leader told me to bring you to him. To complete your training.” The sneer about the last word had left his words all but dripping fresh scorn. “And I won’t fail him in this.”

Kylo had only stared. “You haven’t failed.”

How his lip had curled then, back up and over his teeth like a narglatch ready to draw arterial blood. “But _you_ have.” The general’s hands, curled at the small of his back, had all but creaked in their leather as he held them tighter still. “And it’s time that that ended.”

Pivoting, sharp and sure, Hux had walked away. Had left Kylo alone. And how he’d been struck by the urge, then to reach out with the Force, to drag him back to where he surely belonged. To wrap the ruins of his body around that stiff straight-backed form and hold as tight as he could.

But Hux had left him alone. And Kylo had refused the bacta tank. Only Hux could have forced him. But Hux had gone back to his ship, and his people. That cold knowledge had left him still, left him silent. He’d even allowed the idiots to dress his wounds without active complaint. But then, he suspects now that they must have secretly shot something into his veins when he wasn’t paying attention. Even now he is drowsing, half-dreaming. But he will not let himself fall to full sleep.

Instead he haunts himself with the memory of the girl – of _Rey_. Of her and the ‘trooper and the snow, swirling about him like the spin of the galaxy itself. When it had begun, he had felt so strong. He had never known such _power_. And then they had ripped it apart, pulled it all down around him, revealed it for the cruel illusion it perhaps always was. Lying here now, Kylo thinks bitterly of the power that had thrummed from them both. How he had yearned and cleaved towards hers. How he had _wanted_ her. The balance he lacks, it lurks instead inside of her. She has what he does not. She _is_ what he can never be.

With eyes closed, he gives himself over to a meditative state; it can only but help with the healing process. But his breathing is a laboured, difficult thing. Pain gives him no strength now. It only _hurts_. And even as said pain seems to stretch out every second to agonising hour, Kylo has no real sense of time passing. But Hux had not said how long it would take, and Kylo cannot be certain where Snoke is at this time. His Master has multiple bases, and shifts between them like a phantom. Kylo knows he doesn’t know the least of them. It could be anywhere. _Snoke_ could be anywhere.

But wherever he is, it is not inside of Kylo’s own mind. Now, that cavernous ruin is overtaken by the memory of his father’s dark eyes. They had been so wide, so shocked, at the last. But then the resignation had come so quick, bright and bold behind even the fierce agony of sudden death. It had been as if he’d known. Han Solo had always denied the movement of the Force within his own life, for all his wife, her brother, and his own damned son had been so bright in it. It was just something that happened to other people. It had never had anything to do with him.

From childhood he had always had the sensation his father feared him. As a child, Ben Solo had ended up believing that fathers and mothers were always slightly distant, slightly aloof. That had changed only as he grew older, and came to see his father with the young pilots he trained. It had always looked so easy, so _simple_ , between them all. The laughter and the camaraderie gave them a willing connection that Ben had not been able to forge, even with the privilege and advantage of their bloodline. Even when he tried to change something himself, devoting time to something he had only the vaguest interest in, his father had never been as comfortable with him as his students. Even in the cockpit, there had been something wrong. _He_ had been wrong: ill at ease, uncertain and unhappy.

But they had been so very close, at the last. Han Solo had laid his hand upon the face of his erstwhile son, and then the scavenger’s blade had split it wide open, branding the memory far deeper than his skin alone. And indeed, perhaps she had opened him down to the soul, physical echo of the mental trick she had already mastered: but she’d rummaged around deeper this time, as if she’d had a mind to strip him bare of all that made him Kylo Ren.

_Hux_. With eyes closed and mind wide open, he wills him back. As he already has, a thousand times, since the moment he had walked away while trusting the general to see the truth of their connection. _Hux, come back_.

Such plea garners no answer, in mind or in body. And Kylo despairs, for he cannot see how he is to take any strength from this. His father is dead and Hux is gone, and Kylo is left with little more than a dreadful emptiness. Perhaps Snoke will fill it. Perhaps that is what he will teach him.

_Hux!_

And time _is_ passing. Kylo knows this only in that he can feel his body knitting itself back together. The process comes reluctant and slow; healing has never been his forte, but the Force resonates the air around him now, a kind of low harmonic thrum that calls to the melody his mind ought to still remember. It is cradling, caressing, inviting him back. Inviting him home.

_Ben!_

He opens his eyes, body wracked with shivers – or perhaps he is only shaking. Han Solo is dead. Ben Solo is dead. Kylo Ren still lives and he will rise again.

“ _Ren_.”

The voice almost startles a shout from him, but his throat is tight and his chest tighter still, and he makes no sound. But now he cannot even sit up. Gravity and the weakness of his failing body both have him falling back, leaving him staring at the utilitarian ceiling with wide eyes, his mind teetering between hope and utter despair.

By the time Hux steps into view, peering down upon him like a specimen under a scope, that hope has long since evaporated. “You are disturbing my staff,” he says, bending forward from the waist, hands folded neatly at the small of his back. And it takes Kylo a long moment to choke out his reply, for all it is but one word.

“What?”

Hux rolls his eyes, straightening his back to rigid line as he extends one arm in accusing arc. It takes in the entire room, which resembles the aftermath of the assault on Jakku. Both assaults on Jakku. While Kylo has absolutely no recollection of causing such chaos, the fierce exhaustion on Hux’s face tells the story. The man’s appearance also gives Kylo some indication of how much time has actually passed: the general wears a fresh uniform, hair washed and slicked back, the ruined boots replaced. But not this is not the general he had known. This one remains worn and tattered and openly furious, even as he has tried so valiantly to polish a shine from something intrinsically in ruin.

“Hux.” His voice is hoarse, and it _hurts_ ; Kylo has not spoken aloud in too long. The ache of a dry throat, cracked lips, garners no sympathy from the man at his side. And Kylo looks down, finds one arm largely immobilised by the tubes flowing in and out. He could sustain himself for far longer than the average without food or water, but he has had both supplied without even realising. It should foster resentment; he should be furious. But he is not. He must get up. He must prepare—

“Ren.” The hand strikes hand in the centre of his chest, a blossom of sudden sharp pain that has him gasping, helpless on his back. And Hux presses down, casual careless emphasis. “Stop this,” he says, and he might as well be holding back a child as he adds, “We are still a week out from Snoke. Stay where you are and let the technicians put you back together.”

Kylo can only stare. “Why so long?”

The spasm across his face exists for but a moment, but even though it disappears, it is not gone. Hux’s face has stilled, but Kylo Ren knows much of masks. “We had to drop out of hyperspace.” His lip twitches but a little when he adds with bland ease, “The _Finalizer_ took damage in the explosion we had not originally realised.”

That has him frowning. He, of all people, knows Hux’s terrible and deep skill with thorough examination. “How is that even possible?”

“What does it matter to _you_?” Fury explodes from him like a broadside barrage, his lips curled back over bared teeth. “You never cared about her! Snoke gave you co-commandership, but you didn’t deserve it. You never even _wanted_ it. But it was yours. It was fucking _yours_ and look what you did with it!”

Once, Kylo would have risen gladly to such challenge. Now, he can only stare, and wonder what had become of the general. If he’d even known the general at all. For his part, Hux now stands very still, though his shoulders heave and his face remains reddened. Then, as if some lever has been pulled, he abruptly turns towards the door.

“Wait.”

He stops without turning back. “What is it?”

The even tone could be a good sign, of a temper returned to even keel. It could also be a warning shot fired across his throat. “I can help you.”

He turns back this time – not with rage, but with a deep low scorn that somehow manages to be much worse. “The only way you can help me,” he says, very slow, very even, “is by becoming the successfully transported cargo that was ordered of me.” His mouth twists into eldritch shape, as if he cannot know the words before they are spoken aloud. “Don’t die. Snoke wanted you alive.”

Understanding comes hard, and heavy. “You think he’s going to kill you.” Hux’s expression flickers to utter illegibility, but still Kylo cannot keep this to himself. The words come, desperate and quick and how he _wants_ them to be true. “He wouldn’t—”

“Shut up.” It is scarcely spoken above a whisper, face as pale as starlight. And when Kylo opens his mouth again, one finger rises, his eyes too bright and too wide. “ _No_ , Ren. I don’t want to hear it. I have work to do.”

But Kylo will not let it end here. “If we get her,” he says, urgent and too sharp, “he will _have_ to forgive us.”

For a moment, he says nothing at all. And then he says the only thing is seems possible for him to voice aloud, his utter disbelief like fresh blow to the solar plexus. “ _What_?”

“The girl. The scavenger. _Rey_.” The name feels so odd on his tongue, blazing and alive, an invocation stolen from some forbidden grimoire. “He craves her power, Hux. And she could be truly great in power, if trained to our side. And I know where she is. She went to _them_. But she’s not Light. Not purely. Not entirely. I felt it in her – she wanted to kill me.” Hs right arm, free of tubes, twitches; but he has not the strength to raise it, to run it over the ruin if his face. “She would have killed me, if the planet hadn’t cracked where it did. When it did.”

Those lips – lips that have known him so intimately – only twitch, now. Otherwise, Hux remains terribly still. “She _should_ have killed you,” he says, almost conversational, and though the words are as a vibroblade carving his heart from his chest, Kylo cannot stop.

“No. _No_. That is not how…she can – _I_ can – _we_ can—”

And it explodes from him again, like the terrible ending that had been granted beloved Starkiller. “I am _sick_ of hearing about that pfassking girl!” One fist bears down, sends a juddering vibration through the flimsy durasteel construct of the gurney. But Hux stares only at Kylo, his face the twisted rictus of a man about the most vicious of oratory. “First you leave the droid for her, then you get _no_ information from her, then you allow her to escape and destroy _my_ base—”

“That wasn’t my fault!”

The words bring only dreadful silence. But then the words had been a dreadful mistake. And Kylo does not know what to say, knows there likely is nothing to be said, but still he cannot stop, still he must try—

“I had my mission,” he blurts out, as messy and chaotic as the state of his body. “She was not part of it,” he adds, and Hux remains silent and accusing, his desperation growing with each passing second. “I was _busy_ —”

Hux snorts, abruptly composed, the shift in tempers almost preternatural – and certainly terrifying, at that.  “She was your responsibility.”

“Your ‘troopers let her go!”

Again, his temper wrests free of his once flawless control. “You left that _creature_ in a position to take advantage of them!” he hisses, leaning forward, looming over him like the worst personification of a guilty conscience. “You of all people should have known what she could do!”

But Hux can never be as cruel as Kylo’s own mind. “I didn’t know she could do _that_ ,” he says, and Hux scoffs, straightening up even as he still shouts.

“And yet you begged the Supreme Leader to be allowed to keep her! To _train_ her!”

That gives him pause; Kylo hadn’t realised Hux had heard so much of the conversation between his Master and himself. But he just as rapidly supposes it is no surprise. Hux enjoys information, of all kinds, and if opportunity presented him a novel way of collecting it, he would.

Instead he takes a deep breath, wonders when the galaxy had changed so much that _he_ is the one to try to being some calm to their arguments. “She has much power,” he begins, his voice holding faint persuasion. “She can aid—”

But Hux has never responded before to such nudges of the Force. “She blew up my base,” he says, very cold now. “She has no intention of _aiding_ us. And even if she did, I’d rather drown myself in acid than accept her help.”

“Hux, her power—”

“If you want to fuck her so badly, Ren, then I suggest you go and do it. I have no interest in listening to you moon over her when I have bloody reams of work to do.”

All is very still between them, for a long moment. And then Kylo speaks, soft, almost wondering. “…you’re jealous.”

“Of the girl?” Something flickers in his eyes – bright and burning and _true_. But then it is gone again, and his temper has neatly packed itself away again, this time behind the mocking curve of false smile. “You’re not that good a fuck, Ren,” he says. It’s very nearly gentle. “And we’re through, anyway. We were through before we even started.”

Kylo doesn’t believe him. It still hurts. “Hux—”

“I don’t care.” It’s airy, almost simple, very nearly sing-song even in his perfectly ordered Imperial accent. “Look, Ren: you can lay here with your broken bones and bloody wounds and pity yourself all you please. But as long as I still have a job to do, I will do it.” Now his words harden to durasteel. “And you _will_ heal. You will stay alive. For all the use your worthless hide actually is.”

Kylo can only stare. “He won’t execute you for this.”

With a snort, he passes his hand over his hair, for all it needs no reordering. Kylo can still see the wild thing that lurks beneath the composed exterior. And he yearns towards it even as Hux takes a neat half-step backward, adds, “Not all of us can maintain our illusion of usefulness with mystical powers, Ren.” And he’s scowling, now. “Get better. You’re of no use to anyone like this.”

When he is gone, there is little enough for him to do but stare at the ceiling. The door swishes open again, and muttering, formless shapes gather about him. He ignores them, and their work. His body is not his concern, for now. He thinks only of the man who has already left him here. Hux has never been a robust man, or at least not in the five years Kylo has known him. Even with so little to begin with, he seems to have _shrunk_ ; the padded uniform had all but hung on his diminished frame. His slender features have turned gaunt, his eyes now feral and knowing, an old fox who knows he cannot outrun his fate for much longer.

He wants nothing so much as to call to him, to summon him back. But Kylo knows Hux will not answer. Instead he closes his eyes against the reality of his sickroom, and reaches out in the old way. It brings a dull ache; it’s too much of the Force, wrapped up in the ruin of his wretched body. But it’s a clarification, much in the way he’d felt when fisting his own wound. It allows him to leave the agony where it is centred, and reach out with but his mind alone.

Kylo does not find Hux on the bridge – he is not even in the engine rooms, or with the engineers, as might be expected with the _Finalizer_ apparently in such disarray. Hux is instead in his office. On his holo comm.

Hux is speaking with Areko.

“Armitage.” The admiral leans forward across his own desk, every word the terrible, earnest echo of Kylo’s own thoughts. “You need to _rest_.”

When he rolls his eyes, the gloved hand actually does move through his hair, disordering the deep red strands. “There’s no time for that,” he says, but apparently he has time enough to waste with the admiral because he does not break the connection, even as Kylo wills it so. Areko himself has a faint smile about his lips, hands folded beneath the pointed chin, when he speaks again.

“We make time for what we need.” It’s almost fond when he adds, “And you need this.”

“I also _need_ an operating star destroyer.”

He leans back in his chair, arms opening wide as he shrugs in open invitation. “I can be en route in moments.”

“It’s not my place to command you.” But there’s some oddity about his tone, something Kylo does not want to identify as hope. “You have your own responsibilities.”

The man does smile this time, this time, easy and affectionate. “And you are one of them.”

The blaze of hatred he feels then is dwarfed only by what follows – the flare of desperate, pitiful jealousy. Hux is shaking his head again, hair falling free, and into the shadows of his dark-circled eyes.

“Randel—”

“No.” One hand rises, palm outward. But it is not unkind. “Just…stop.” When Hux obliges, he adds, with that same terrible soft smile, “just for a moment.”

Hux turns his face away, and Kylo both loves and hates him for it. “I should go.”

But he’s not reaching for the comm’s killswitch. Instead he’s mirroring the other man with gentle ease, leaning back in his chair, his body given over to relaxed surrender.

Areko leans forward, smile vanished, eyes knowing. “Armitage,” he says, very soft. “Take off your gloves.”

At first the general only stares, his expression perfectly shuttered and his hands unmoving. Kylo think – Kylo _hopes_ – that Hux will flare, will reach over, will slam the holofeed closed and leave the man alone and in the dark aboard his own ship.

But instead he sighs. Already his fingers move, swift and careful over the soft leather. Kylo dimly wonders what he had done with the gloves he’d likely ruined on Starkiller, even as Hux casts aside those he wears now, and opens his bared hands to the man at the other end of the line.

“And?”

Areko’s hands are again steepled before his mouth. They all know he smiles. “Open your trousers.”

Though he’s away from his body, Kylo feels his chest tighten, every muscle hard and aching with the desire to reach forward, to reach across lightyears to throttle the man to absolute silence. But Hux cares not for what Kylo wants. He seems instead to be dreaming, somehow. His hands are slow as the flies are opened, folded back to reveal the soft curl of his sleeping cock. There he leaves it, untouched, even as Areko gives a pleased small sigh.

“Take yourself in hand.” When Hux hesitates, he clicks his tongue in soft disapproval. “You need this, Armitage.” As that bare hand closes uncertain around his length, he adds, “You deserve it.”

Though his breath comes shorter now, he still has enough to spare for a sharp snort. “What, a cheap handjob over the comms system?”

Areko raises an eyebrow. “I’m worth rather more than that,” he drawls, but waits for no reassurance. “Make it soft. Take it slow. Anything more, and you might just explode.”

Hux stops, Kylo’s heart leaping into his throat. But he only reaches for his desk drawer, withdrawing a shallow unguent jar. When his hand is slick and smooth he wraps it about himself with a far firmer hand. A moment later and he even allows himself a laugh, breathed out, shaking and soft.

“I think I want to explode,” he says, not even half a joke, and Areko just shakes his head.

“But you don’t. Not really.” His own hands are as motionless as his eyes when he says with serious gravity, “You’re more than this.”

Hux just shakes his head again. “This is it,” he says, and Kylo aches to hear the sudden deep despair of his words. “This is the _end_.”

“Not yet.” The words are light, yet hardly mocking. “There’s so much further to go,” he adds, and then his voice turns soft, nearly hypnotic. “I know you, Armitage Hux,” he says, and even Kylo is lulled by the words, for all he wishes to wrap his hands around the man’s scrawny throat. “I know where you come from,” Areko says. “I know where you have been.” His eyes have a gleam now, not unlike the charging glow of Starkiller’s primary weapon. “I know where you are _going_.”

Hux swallows hard, hand working faster. “Where?”

His hands open, reveal the bright easy smile. “Anywhere you want, of course.”

Areko keeps talking – of course Areko keeps talking, the man has never known when to shut up. But even as Kylo watches, heartsick, he cannot hate him for it. The soothing voice has worked miracles upon Hux’s body, and in the end he lies sprawled in his own command chair, head back, the pale length of his throat working with every gasping breath, his jumping pulse quickening right to the very moment of his coming. Kylo can only watch, distant and alone, as Hux raises his hand to the holo as if to offer proof, the white of his spend dripping from the light wriggle of his fingers. The desire to taste is almost as overwhelming as the need to wrap his lips around him, to drink deep, to never let him go.

But Areko just raises one eyebrow, his smile knowing and easy. “Did that help?”

Hux has already reached again for his locked top drawer, taking from it a sealed box of cleansing wipes. “I don’t see what difference it makes,” he says, already slipping back behind his habitual mask. Areko’s words are whip-quick in their return.

“But do you _feel_ better?” It’s insistent, undeniable. And when Hux glances up Kylo knows Areko sees it as clearly as he does: something strange and vulnerable, beneath the glittering façade of the First Order general. It’s something, perhaps, of how he’d looked as a youth.

But of course Areko had known Hux, then. And Kylo never will.

“Yes,” he admits, slow, on a long breath. Areko only nods, secure in his victory.

“Then it helped.”

Kylo has never wanted so badly to touch someone – to lay his hands upon them, to drink deep of their lifeforce even as they drain him dry of his own. But he cannot have that here. This is not his place. He has not been invited; he is not welcome. All that is left to him now is to pull back, to curl in upon himself as if that might shield him from the agony that instead radiates from within, and therefore might never be escaped from. Kylo closes his eyes tight, and lets the dark take him instead. But it never takes him far enough. That’s always been the problem.

 

*****

 

When he wakes again, it is to find nothing at all. The bacta has been removed, the tubes retracted. The room is cast silent in dim pallor, and, for a moment: he thinks he has died. That he has come back to his physical form even as it lies on its funereal slab, his spirit rejected by the beyond and sent back to the ruin of his body, forcing him to live through eternity until it rots out from beneath him. But Kylo sits up, and his body follows, protesting all the way. He knows then that he is still alive. But he is cold, and he is alone.

Shrouded in borrowed scrubs, too small for his body even in the best of circumstances, pulling tight over fragile skin, Kylo makes his way back to what passes for home. Even as he does, he almost thinks his quarters might have been reassigned. But he finds them the same as they always have been. Vader’s plinth is a monolith at the centre of the room, helmet crowned upon it. The watchful caverns of its collapsed eyes pass far greater judgement than even Hux at his bureaucratic worst.

Kylo turns away. His failure is a constant ache in his chest, as if a burning lightsaber has lodged itself there and will burn on without end. He has no idea how to ask advice of his grandfather. Not when he does not deserve it. He had been given a gift, as Anakin Skywalker had had in Padmé Amidala. She had been a woman both brilliant and bold, a singular person who could move the galaxy entire with but her words, bending it to her will with the fruit of her ideas. Kylo himself had found something so dreadfully similar in Hux. And even with Vader’s warnings as constant reminder of what awaited failure, Kylo also had let it slip through his fingers.

Now that he stands again in the relative haven of his quarters, Kylo at last stretches out with his mind, thought-fingers rifling quick and rough over the consciousness of the ship entire. But he can sense no sign of Hux. Sudden panic fills him the way lahars break free of exploded calderas; he’s casting about for robes, for his mask – but his helmet is gone, given over in unwilling sacrifice to the ruins of Starkiller. Kylo stands very still as the truth of the matter overtakes him. He cannot go out to seek Hux amongst his crew without it. He cannot be seen this way.

It takes him long moments to even consider what use his comm might prove. The little thing is clumsy in his hands; the fingers feel numb, too large for what he remembers of them before. At first, he has no idea who to contact. The only viable option that comes to mind is the lieutenant who has always acted as his aide-de-camp. In truth, Kylo barely recalls his name; he’s not even entirely sure he ever knew it. But attempting to comm Hux without his most recent command passcode – and Kylo has no idea what it is, they change every second day – reroutes the message to said lieutenant instead. Kylo presses in a message, and does not even sit to await its reply. He knows it is pathetic. But, here and now, there is only Vader to see. And Vader has known him from childhood. Vader should know better than to expect better, even of his only grandson.

It pings. While it seems to have taken forever, Kylo can admit that the man – _Mitaka_ – is efficient about the simple things. And his message is just that.

_The General is aboard the_ Fatalis _. It has arrived to aid in our repairs. I can inform him that you wish to speak with him, at his convenience._

There’s a harsh crack, then: utter collapse, and the damned thing is broken into tiny pieces. It falls as silver rain to the cold durasteel of the floor. He should have looked up his passcode. He should have bypassed security with a nudge of the Force. He should have commed _Hux_. Now that wistful weed of a creature knows how Kylo has been left to rot, out of reach and out of the loop. _I can inform him that you wish to speak with him_ , smarms the message, mocking and mild. And then, even worse: _at his convenience_. Fury leaves him still, impotent and choking.

Kylo cannot wait for something so irrelevant as the general’s _convenience_. But he cannot just take a shuttle and board another star destroyer without invitation, not even as the Master of the Knights of Ren. He longer has even his mask, let alone true authority. But that is not what holds him back. That, instead, is the scorn he would undoubtedly find upon Hux’s face.

He does not even have his saber, now. He can examine its remnants at bitter leisure, as they lie scattered across his worktable. How they had been retrieved from dying Starkiller, he might never know. But the hilt matters not; it is the cracked crystal that takes his gaze, utterly shattered now. Raising his hands, he allows the jagged pieces to run through bare fingers. They catch on skin, embed, pull away as they heed false gravity. He’s bleeding, again, but it doesn’t matter. He’s not sure it had ever stopped in the first place.

Presenting himself before Hux now seems a fool’s errand. Kylo cannot aid in the repair of the ship. He has never had his uncle’s intuition, his grandfather’s skill, his own father’s frank passion. He is of no use to the general, except by being alive. By being something to be delivered to Snoke.

The thought of Master now rocks a seismic shiver down his spine. It is time to open his mind to true meditation. Since the fall of Starkiller, he has not known the presence, nor the shadow of his Master. That in itself is not strictly unusual; even in childhood, he had not _always_ been there. But this quiet is different. It is too deep, too dark. It is disapproving, because he has proven another disappointment. Kylo Ren has murdered Ben Solo’s father, and still it has not made of him the true vessel of the Force that Snoke had promised he would one day be.

This is not the emptiness left by his father. This leaves him hollow, scraped out, but not clean. There still remains the remnants, of both blood and memory. So many years he has spent, working towards this. There have been sacrifices: his own willingly made, while those he forced from others had been far less freely given.

There is Light and there is Dark, Snoke has told him from the beginning. To align with one and not the other is to limit one’s scope, to willingly paralyse one entire realm of potential. The truest reside betwixt and between. Ben Solo had been born to the Light, ill-met as they were; his grandfather had embraced the Dark, but then allowed it to consume him. Kylo Ren can be both, and he can be neither. Only then will he know true power. Only then will he know true peace.

What he had felt in Hux’s body had been pure potential. Hux is a neutral being, holding no interest in light nor dark. He finds peace only in order. Kylo’s own chaotic nature cannot be anything but his balance. If only he had not turned away. If only he had not left him alone.

The pounding upon the door comes from a place far distant from his thoughts. He does recognise the dim sound of a door opening; an override has been entered. Only one person aboard the ship has such executive power. And then a slap across his face jolts his body back to life, mind screaming as it is dragged across mindspace. It leaves him groggy, disorientated, reluctantly returning to himself. But Hux is before him, wild-eyed, hands on him, shaking him until Kylo raises his hands, and closes them tight around his wrists.

Hux does not even appear to notice. “Where did you _go_?” he demands, voice pitching too high on the question; Kylo can only frown, even the gloom of his quarters too much for aching eyes.

“I’m right here.”

“I – _kriff_.” Hux shoves him back, almost pushing him to a sprawl upon the floor. As Kylo carefully levers upwards, Hux has already taken to his feet, pacing what little space there is. Then the general pivots on sudden turn, one shaking finger pointed in his direction.

“You weren’t in the med bay.”

He has not been scolded like this since childhood. “I thought I had been discharged.”

“Not by my orders.” His hand snaps back to his head, brow furrowed, eyes very dark. “Mitaka said you were looking for me—”

“ _Mitaka_ said that?” His own voice, so recently slow and uncertain, sharpens to a point. “I never told him to say that.”

Hux rolls his eyes. “He had a message from you, but then received no reply when he asked what you wanted him to do with it.” Now he throws his hands to the air, resumes pacing. “And I don’t have your tracker fix any longer—”

“I don’t have a tracker.”

That startles him to stillness. Then, a sour twist of lips is all he allows himself, nothing anywhere near a true smile. “Well, not anymore, you don’t.” He nods at Ren’s clothing, just the soft slim practicality of training clothes. “It was in your belt. How else do you think we found you on Starkiller?”

Somehow, that hurts. “I…I just figured Snoke knew where I was.”

“He told me nothing. Just to find you. And to bring you.” He’s rubbing at his eyes, now; Kylo suspects he does not know he is doing it. “Kriff, Ren, why can’t you just do as you’re told?”

The words come stiff, just as tired as his. “I’m not a hound to be called to heel.”

“No. Much as it would please me to collar you, no. You’re not.” The image is a potent one, too powerful; it curls low in Kylo’s gut with sudden arousal, and Hux turns abruptly away. “I…I should go.”

“Wait.”

Somehow, he does. And he flinches as Kylo reaches forward, lays both hands on either side of his face. He desires nothing more than to lean close, than to press their foreheads together. This had been how his father had touched him, though not with only one hand. This is both palms, cradling and possessive. And between them Hux is wild, watchful, predator become desperate prey.

Kylo could shift, again. He could move to thoughtspace, could soothe Hux’s mind from within, as Areko had done from without. But Hux had invited that, then.

“You need to relax,” he says, instead, and can only hope it is gentle. “I could teach you techniques. Meditation, I mean.”

“As if _you_ have ever been a stellar example of cool collected calm.”

“Hux—”

But he answers with his own hand, pressed to his face – first, over the vague heat where he had slapped him from his meditative trance. And then it moves to the scar, begins to apply pressure. The faint prickle of pain grows stronger, needles moving deeper as Hux pushes firmly down, though it’s more curious than cruel. Fingertips then begin a light tease at the edges, granulating and bright, and that _does_ awaken fresh sudden agony.

And Hux frowns, purses his lips. “It’s healing.”

“What?”

“Your _face_.” His own is a strange tight tangle of emotion. “I just…I never thought…” As if burned, Hux retracts his hand. He is about to walk away and they both know it. Only a word stops him.

“Hux.”

“Ren.” The way he tilts his head is utterly contrived, but then Hux has been trained in such patent mummery from early childhood. “I _do_ remember your ultimatum. But despite recent events, I have not changed my mind.” The mask slips a little, now; the sneer cannot hide entirely his hurt. “I thought that made me of no particular use, to you?”

Kylo does not rise to the challenge. “When has anything ever been that simple?”

The sneer turns to bitter smile. “It’s a good question,” he says, in a voice almost approaching normal. “I don’t have answers for you.” It’s very cold when he adds, “I sincerely doubt I’ll have time enough to formulate them for you, either.”

“I’ll speak for you,” he says, and Hux gives a short bark of laughter.

“I’d rather you didn’t.” His chin tilts upward, eyes shuttered and dark. “I can speak for myself.”

And Kylo is aching inside, his reply kept to himself. _I cannot lose you_ , he whispers to his mind, and knows Hux cannot hear. He’s already turning away.

“Go back to your meditations, Ren.” It’s called back over his shoulder when he says, “Leader Snoke said that when you come to him, he will complete your training.” And then, just as the door closes between them: “I doubt he will be as kind as I have been.”

Alone, and in the dark, Kylo bows his head. There is little more to do now than just to close his eyes, and give himself up to it once again.

 

*****

 

Areko is aboard the _Finalizer_. It could be worse. He seems to keep his hands off Hux, at least. And it is not as if they are likely to run into one another; Kylo but rarely leaves his quarters, keeping to himself with only the relic of his grandfather for company. Of course Vader speaks to him no more than Snoke himself does. Sometimes he wonders if either of them ever have. If either of them are even real. Once, he catches himself in the middle of composing a comm to Hux. _Have you seen him_ , it says. _Outside of a holo. Outside of your mind. I think I have, but now I don’t believe it. I don’t believe anything. Except for you. I would believe you. Have you seen—_

The comm is never sent. Of course it generates no answer. And Kylo is left alone in the blasted plains of his mind, picking at its jagged edges. There’s just the faint spark of old bonds, now. His mother’s agony had flared bright, but only for a moment; he knows now she has buried it deep and screaming, into the bloody pit where all her misery goes. Her planet, her parents, her pride – perhaps even a little boy named Ben Solo. All covered over. They are not forgotten. But they are never forefront. Not when there is so much yet to do.

And Luke Skywalker. That bond is faint; since the massacre, he has never been able to catch hold of it again, Skywalker having unceremoniously severed it almost to the root. But Kylo can sense a brightness to it, now. The girl has found him. And so now he has a new hope, one that awakens more with every moment he spends in her company.

Kylo has only himself, or what is left of it. There is still no answer from Snoke. All the whispered words from childhood: vanished. Being left alone in his head makes him feel small, in a way he has not known since before memory. But Kylo has not ventured to the projection suite aboard the _Finalizer_ , far smaller and less grandiose than the one built upon Starkiller. He already knows Snoke will not answer. While he has not asked Hux when they will arrive at the co-ordinates given him, Kylo can feel the great ship is still stranded. They move nowhere. There is time enough, yet. But for what, Kylo does not know.

He summons meals only upon rare occasion, each bland and barely enough to sustain basic life. And he answers no calls, for all they are rarer still. So when he opens the door to accept the meal from the droid, and finds instead Admiral Randel Areko, Kylo is surprised enough not to force the door closed again. It gives the kriffing man time enough to pause, eyebrow raised, gazing down dubiously at the insipid rations in his hands.

“Surely the Master of the Knights of Ren could do better than _this_ ,” he says, and Kylo reaches for the door control.

“I have no interest in speaking with you.”

“Oh, but I think you might,” he says, light and easy – though his eyes meet his now, and they are perfect storm-grey green. “Don’t be too quick to dismiss me, Master Ren. I have information you need.” And he quirks a smile, lopsided and knowing. “So: may I come in?”

After killing Ben Solo, Kylo had spent a great deal of time moving about Snoke’s bases, and most of that alone. Since entering the greater echelons of the Order, he has become accustomed to still being alone. To being respected and feared, to being something beyond understanding. Hux had been the first to refuse him that isolation. Perhaps it is only logical that Hux’s only friend would be able to do the same.

And Areko gives a light sigh, and a small shrug. “Yes, I know I should have brought a better offering,” he says, letting his smile fall away. “I could go get something far nicer, if it helps. Perhaps something warm, sweet, with a little cream—”

“ _No_.” There’s some appeal to the thought of having the man scurry about like a houseservant after his needs. But Kylo also has the distinct impression Areko might actually enjoy it. Not to mention he wouldn’t put it past him to put a most _personal_ touch to things.

This time, Areko chooses to wait a moment longer – watching, though not wary. It’s a distinct kind of recklessness that not even Hux has demonstrated in his presence. Yes, Hux is one of the rare few people who do not fear Kylo Ren, but Areko takes it one step further. He’s careless with it. For not the first time, Kylo wonders if the man is actually entirely sane.

“Master Ren,” he says, at last; apparently he has never liked silence. “Your…ahem, _dinner_ , is getting cold?”

It would be easy enough to reach into his mind, to snatch out this alleged _information_ for himself. For all there has always been an unspoken rule about doing such things to his co-commander, Areko is a different story entirely. Even if he has command of his own ship, and despite the fact Snoke considers his toy soldiers to be far less expendable than had the long-dead Emperor Palpatine.

But then there is the matter of Hux himself. With the man standing before him now, Kylo remembers Hu’s pure exhaustion. He also remembers and how his face had changed, with that voice whispering in hushed affection along the comms. Hux had slept well that night – or at least, the few hours he had permitted himself. That had been Areko’s doing, and Areko’s alone.

Kylo steps back. No words are offered. His expression remains glowering, for all his face has never been as intimidating as the mask. Of course Areko simply flitters in, sets the rations down, and then blinks widely at Vader’s helm.

“Is that a genuine artefact, or did you get it from one of those dreadful holosites? Because I must tell you, I’ve browsed quite a few, and—”

“Admiral.” Even without the vocoder, his voice grates hard over the name. “Why are you here?”

He blinks, once, twice, three times. “Oh. Well. If we must get to it right away, I suppose we shall. Who needs pleasantries, after all?” Though the put out expression suggested that _he_ had expected something of the sort, at least. “I’ve come to talk to you about the general.”

Kylo is very still. “I’m not discussing him with you.”

“Yes, well, I’m not giving you the choice.” There’s durasteel in his eyes as he steps smartly forward, far too close to Kylo for comfort. But there’s not an iota of fear to his stance or mind or aura when he speaks, clipped quick military tone. “I have been sent here to take command from General Hux.” He pauses, just for emphasis. “And Leader Snoke has also ordered me to eliminate him in the process.”

For a moment, Kylo thinks that _he_ is the one who has gone mad. “What?”

“I was sent here,” Areko repeats, very patient, “to remove the general from his position. In every respect.”

One hand flashes out, gloved fist closing around his throat. With a grunt Kylo hefts him high, so that they are for once eye to eye. Fury crashes through him, tightening his grip even as that smug face reddens, even purples already. His pale eyes begin to bulge, the delicate bones of his throat grinding in Kylo’s grip. But still there is no fear in him, and that leaves Kylo with something like horror curling low in his own gut.

Areko cannot speak. But unlike the few officers Kylo has actually performed this manoeuvre on – surprisingly few, given the wild rumours that circulate – he does not try. He only stares. And his mind opens like a supernova, one thought shouted in a startlingly clear message for one without Force sensitivity.

_I have not come to harm him_.

It could be a lie. But untruths are harder to form in a mindscape, which is always far more impression than actual clear thought. And so, Kylo lets him go. The man drops, stumbles, regains equilibrium without actually falling over first; his hands move to his high-collared throat, flutter there for just a moment. Kylo regrets that he cannot see the bruising.

“You have spoken to the Supreme Leader,” he says first, very slow, clear warning; Areko clears his throat, allows himself a small dignified little cough, and speaks just as slowly.

“Yes.” He must clear his throat again, somewhat harsher this time. “He still wants _you_ , of course. He was the one who dropped the _Finalizer_ out of hyperspace – she wasn’t damaged in the implosion of Starkiller at all. Hux isn’t an idiot, he sent her away long before she could have come to harm.”

He thinks again of Hux, in the medbay. Of the certainty in his thoughts, that he must not fail in what would surely be his final mission. “Then he must suspect something of this.”

“Hux is now entirely focused on what little still makes sense to him.” The words are almost pitying. They make Kylo want to wrap his bare hands about his throat, this time, and squeeze the life out of it with fingers and not the Force. But Areko’s shaking his head, reminding him that the conversation still goes on, and his overactive imagination must wait its turn. “Yes, I suppose he has _some_ inkling that things have evolved beyond repair. But he can’t afford to think about that now. Not when there is still work he _can_ do.”

The bleakness of his conclusion is as deep and black as the Void itself. “He knows his duty.”

Areko only nods. “As do we all.”

“So why tell me?” He can’t help the incredulous tone. “You must realise I cannot allow you to complete yours.”

That has him scoffing, trying again to straighten the ruin of his collar. “As if I ever intended to.” Again, his voice takes on the hard tone that has Kylo remembering that he _is_ a commissioned and functional admiral, with command and considerable powers of his own. “The _Finalizer_ will be hyperspace-worthy in a little under two cycles,” he says, and raises one eyebrow. “That is the most time I can permit you.”

He doesn’t mean to sound bewildered. “Time for what?”

“To go. To _leave_.” And then, with his own impatience rising, “to take him _with_ you.”

“What?”

Again, that strange pity. “I don’t know you,” he says. “But I know Armitage. And I’ve seen what you did to him.”

The pain is not unexpected, but it doesn’t make it hurt all the less. “Didn’t he tell you? He didn’t want what I had to offer him.”

Areko waved one hand as if at some poor joke. “He just didn’t know what you could do for him.”

“And _you_ do?”

“I have…an active imagination, shall we say.” Half-turning, his eyes move back to the plinth at the centre of the room. It’s not particularly strange; more than a few officers within the Order have indicated a fascination with Vader, when introduced to Kylo Ren. But this is different. This is remembrance.

“I saw him, once,” he says, quite sudden. “From a distance. And I…”

He should not encourage the madman. But he has always hungered for an understanding of his grandfather. “What?”

“I _felt_ it.” Areko glances back, that odd half-smile upon his lips again. “I don’t know the Force so intimately as you,” he says. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t know it at all.”

That leaves Kylo with only silence, shocked and still. It seems almost natural that Areko would take full advantage of the moment, reaching forward to actually pat his arm. “Think about it, if you must. But I believe you already know the way.”

Kylo watches him go, but only for a spare moment. The question almost asks itself. Even if he already knows its answer.

“Does he really mean that much, to you?”

Areko turns back, the lupine lines of his face composed in a thoughtful air. “Well, we’ve known each other for a long time, after all. And his father absolutely _despised_ me. That counts for a lot, with Armitage.” He actually reaches out, again, pats him even more gently than before. “Don’t worry, he would have despised you too.” He pauses. And then he actually _pouts_. “Probably a whole lot more, come to think of it.”

They are not men for idle gossip, for the banter of comrades. But Kylo can ask no-one else this question. “What _was_ his father like?”

“Brendol?” Areko snorts, fingers idly at his throat, again. “An absolute ass.” At Kylo’s raised eyebrow, he rolls his eyes. “Oh, I mean, he wasn’t a _stupid_ man, by any means. But Armitage’s intelligence doesn’t descend from him, believe me.”

“I thought his mother was a scullery maid?”

This second roll of the eyes is even more exaggerated than the first. “His mother was a Rebel spy. But don’t tell _him_ that, he has no idea.” All the mocking lightness of the words vanishes now, sharp and warning. “And he wouldn’t appreciate being told, believe you me.”

This strange, small man: Kylo has seen many oddities of this galaxy, but Areko is quite a force unto himself. “And what if I don’t?” he says, light, flat. “What if I leave, and leave him behind? Or I just stay, and go to my Master as I am bid?”

Again, he blinks. “Well,” he says, very slow. “Then I suppose you’ll just have to learn to live with yourself.” His face is carefully bland when he now casts his eyes about the dim room. “I’m sure it has been working out so well for you, so far.”

Fury blinds him, red and black and aching deep _white_. Had he his saber in hand, Kylo would have shredded him. As it is, he only stands before him, breathing hard, body aching. Areko has not moved, head tilted back so their eyes might meet, standing very still.

“Are we done here?” he asks, very soft. And Kylo chokes on the words, for all he does not move.

“We are finished, yes.”

“Well.” Areko takes a neat step back, straightening his uniform as he goes. “Good evening then, Master Ren.”

When the door sweeps closed, it leaves him alone, again. In body, and in mind.

Kylo Ren puts his head in his hands, and realises he does not know what to do. And that there is nobody left to guide him but his own broken bleeding mind.

 

*****

 

He doesn’t remember any time before Snoke. Snoke has always been there – and even now, Kylo still knows the place where he resides. And yet the connection is shuttered, and he is ignored. It is not like the place in his soul where has carved Han Solo away: _that_ is dark and shuttered and closed, a mistake made and put aside. Han Solo is gone. That cannot be changed.

But this could be. It _must_ be changed, if he is to do as Areko suggests – because he cannot take Hux and remain Snoke’s prized acolyte. He cannot have both. He does not _want_ both.

He has known this from the very beginning. But he had not thought it to be an issue, then: while Snoke has always been in his mind, the apprentice will always overtake the master. That is the rule of two. And Kylo has long known Snoke chose him for his very particular potential. Snoke himself could not achieve what he demands of Kylo. He is old, and the Force has twisted him beyond recognition, beyond renewal. Kylo is young, Kylo is malleable. Only Kylo could master the legacy Snoke wishes to leave in his wake.

But, for the first time, Kylo wonders at the order of things. _I have foreseen it_ , Snoke has said, over and over, a maddening mantra through the march of years. _There must be no Jedi, there must be no Sith. There must only be_ you _._

Kylo has assumed always that this means he would one day take Snoke’s place. That Snoke exists to bring the balance to the Force that Anakin Skywalker had not. He has never thought too hard about Snoke’s origins. _I have always known you_ , he says. _We have always been destined to meet_.

Anakin Skywalker, born with no father – he had been created by the will of the Force alone. It had decided to exert its will in human form over the galaxy entire, but Anakin had faltered, and Anakin had failed. It had fallen then to Kylo Ren, born of the Skywalker line, given over to another father by the will of the Force, to complete what had been begun on Tattooine so many years ago.

And Kylo had always believed him. It had all made sense, when that fool Centrist Casterfo had revealed to the Senate his mother’s true origins. Ben Solo had been drifting away from Snoke, then; travelling with Luke, he been all but immersed in the Light. It had been unnatural, uncomfortable, but still: it was the _Light_. It has always called to him. It has always wanted him.

That was when he had turned – when Kylo Ren had risen from the ashes of Ben Solo’s self-immolation. The knights had always been but dream figures. But they had come to him in the night: they had raised him up from uneasy slumber, to strip him bare and remake him anew. It had been raining, that night. Warmed in the tropical air, it had coursed over his raised face like blood. But then they dressed in him in tattered robes, the mask fitted like a second skin over his head. And then, in his hand, the _saber_ —

It lies in pieces, now. He’d built it himself, though only in dreams. But it was _real_ , in that moment. The cracked crystal, the cobbled together hilt, the blade burning in crossguard hilt—

Kylo still bears the scars, even now. Before that moment, he had not known the blade; he had not trained with it, did not know its true weight in his hand. But it was his. _Had_ been his. It is gone now. Like Starkiller. Both he and the general have been stripped of weapon. Stripped of purpose.

But that is hardly true. If he goes now to Hux, the man will not come. He already expects his death. Of course, he does not expect to find it at the hands of his old friend. Perhaps he even suspects Ren will do it. That they will stand before Snoke, together, one last time. Like lovers come to be married, but instead Snoke will order Ren to take his life, rather than his hand. Instead of being bound, they will be forever torn apart.

Kylo sits with head in hands and mourns the loss of a broken path. Yes, he has imagined them together. He knows Hux’s belief: that he one day will be emperor. He also knows that it would be impossible without his own power behind it. But when he had offered himself to Hux, he had thought it natural progression. That he would take his true power, supplant Snoke, as the natural order. And then he and Hux would together take the galaxy.

But Snoke is now taking Hux away from him. And Kylo suspects now that there is no true order – First, nor natural.

But there is also nowhere to go.

 

*****

 

“I didn’t think you left your quarters.”

Kylo doesn’t look away from the view. They are floating in space, unanchored, without aim or thrust. He has never before felt to have so much in common with Hux’s damned ship. “I don’t,” he says, distant, strange. And of course Hux scoffs. He ought to walk away. But instead he steps closer. They’ve always been better when they are fighting.

“Except you clearly _have_ left your quarters,” he says, with just the right tilt of snark, and Kylo presses his lips tight together.

“Don’t you have _work_ to do, General?”

The faint snort could be something almost like amusement. Kylo doesn’t bother to look. But though he remains still, arms crossed tight over the low constant ache of his chest and side, Hux is coming. And then Hux is standing, by his side.

“It’s very quiet, here.” He sounds almost surprised, though his eyes work quick over the starfield before them, as if seeking out squadrons of enemies that aren’t even there. “The rest of the ship isn’t like this.”

The man mourns not only the loss of his project, but of the orderly ship he had once been so proud of. Kylo knows he should let this go. That he should turn away from Hux, as Hux had once turned away from him. The opportunity has passed. The connection is lost.

But he only nods. “I was surprised you hadn’t utilised all areas. Including the more…aesthetic ones.”

Hux is rolling his eyes, and Kylo doesn’t need to look to know it. “I suppose I’m precious about this place.” And then, with his own arms in firm parade stance, he adds with ice-pack lightness, “As much good as it does me. I came here to be alone, and look who I found.”

“Don’t you spend that time with the admiral?”

That keeps Hux quiet for a long moment. Kylo braces for an argument – almost looks forward to a fresh row. But when he speaks, Hux sounds only tired. “Are we really going to do this again?”

“Are we?”

Yes, there could be an argument in this – one that might end in fists and in teeth and in blood, even. And yet Hux just shakes his head, again. “Ren.” The firmness of his voice falters, even as he clearly tries to bully it back. “What happened between us, shouldn’t have.”

“Do you regret it?”

Hux doesn’t meet his eyes. He just stares out, and never in. It leaves his eyes silvered with the sheen of a thousand unfamiliar systems. “It was…an experience.”

“Oh, _well_ , then. That’s certainly high praise from the Order’s master of oratory.”

Hux glares up at him from beneath eyebrows raised high. “You were a virgin, Ren. What did you expect?”

It should hurt. Somehow, it doesn’t. “I wasn’t the second time,” he says, and then makes a show of considering. “Or the third time, either.”

Hux is already turning away. “I have work to do.”

It might be a mistake to do it, but Kylo’s hand moves to his arm before he can think twice. When the man stills, he speaks too quick. “You can stay.” Already, he is moving to keep his promise. “I’ll go.” When Hux moves forward, again, his voice betrays him with fresh desperation. “I don’t want you to go.”

That damned pity, again, has taken over his eyes when he turns back. “I can’t give you what you want, Ren.”

“And what _do_ I want?” Hux only stares, and Kylo’s voice rises to a shout. “Tell me!” It breaks, then, speaking for them both when silence would serve them better. “Because I don’t _know_. I don’t think I’ve ever known.”

Hux closes his eyes, but briefly, as if seeking strength from some unknown fount. And he has always said he does not believe in the Force. “You want to know who you are,” he says, too gentle. “And I’m not permitted to say your deadname.” He shakes his head. “I can’t even say your live one.”

“Kylo,” he blurts out. “Kylo Ren.”

He turns away. “You see,” he says, too soft, “that’s the problem, right there.”

This time Kylo allows him to walk away. There is nothing he could have said to make him stay. And so, alone, he stares out into the stars. He has no idea of where they are. Navigation had never been a strength he could claim. He’d never had the instincts of a pilot, the intuition of a born mechanic. And certainly he’d also never had the charm nor patience nor drive to follow his mother into politics. And for all his sensitivity to the Force, he was just not _good_ enough to follow his uncle’s path to the Light. All they had wanted for him was to be an heir. To any of them. Ben Solo had failed each in turn, one after the other. Only Snoke had given him a road he could walk.

Only Hux had ever joined him on it. Even if only for a brief, shining moment.

The memory of the battle, in the snow, is a harsh one. But with the wounds healing, it is easier to recall without the immediate burst of shame. The scavenger, and the traitor: both of them, with Anakin Skywalker’s saber in hand. The one that had never once come at his command. The way they had both moved – they had been trained, but in different ways. He by the Order, her by the banal cruelty of life itself. In some ways, they had been in fact the two sides of Anakin himself: first the slave of the sands, and then the slave of the Empire itself.

Both of them had been so unknowing of the Force. Yet they had moved with it: instinctive, implicit. Kylo remembers but vaguely how it had been, when he’d been very young, and so new in the Force. Young enough to think that everything was only ever beautiful. Young enough to be unaware of when everything would hurt.

They are the answer. He knows this. He cannot simply take Hux and run to the Void. It does not work that way. Even with Luke Skywalker as dubious shining example, he cannot expect to mask himself from Snoke forever. Not with their connection. Snoke will find them.

And perhaps Kylo alone, amongst all those in the galaxy and beyond, knows how to kill him. But that does not mean he can _do_ it alone.

He moves as if dreamwalking, but his body is straightbacked and sure as he pushes through the crowded corridors of the _Finalizer_. People stare as he passes. He ignores them. They do not matter. Nothing matters except his path to the general’s quarters. Of course there is no answer to his call at the door. It’s but a moment’s flicker of Force before he is inside, passing through to the general’s small bedchamber. He’s curled in his bed, unusually dead to the galaxy. Kylo knows him for a light sleeper. It seems almost a pity to wake him.

But needs must, as the Force wills.

Hux starts, turns, very nearly tangles in his own starched bedsheets. “Ren, what the _pfassking hell_ —”

“I want to have sex.”

He boggles at him, for a long moment; it’s almost sweet, to see him so totally flabbergasted. And then his face is reordering itself, folding emotion back behind the mask of _general_ , and Kylo is left only to mourn in silence when he makes his next cold demand.

“For stars’ sake, _why_.”

“Because you were the first.” He says nothing about lasts. He supposes Hux hears it all the same, even as he all but whispers, “Please.”

“Oh, for – fine. _Fine_.” He’s freed himself enough to throws the covers back, revealing his rumpled sleep clothes. “But not in here.”

“Why not?”

The withering look this earns him oddly leaves Kylo terribly close to laugher. “Because I hate sleeping in the wet spot, and I’m not calling even a service droid at this hour to change my damn sheets.” He’s already shedding his light sleeping clothes, fumbling something from a nearby drawer. “Hurry _up_.”

Yet Kylo does not hurry to follow. He finds oddly that he wishes this only to last as long as he can draw it out. When he does move to the outer chamber, it is to find Hux already naked, laid out upon his couch. There’s a towel upon it, too. Naturally. And Hux raises an eyebrow in unspoken challenge, sprawled as he is. It renders him strange and inelegant, skin luminous and silvered by starlight. It’s an odd beauty, given the vulnerable depths of shadowed eyes, the exhausted stretch of too-thin limbs.

“Ren—”

Kylo silences him from down on his knees. Now before him, Kylo spreads those pale thighs, lightly freckled as they are from the solar pods in the gymnasiums. Pressing fingers deep into the fragile skin, he moves straight to mouthing around his cock. Then, he pulls backward, where pursed lips move to his hole. There his tongue begins a lazy flicker that has Hux shivering beneath him. It had been like this, their last time. Hux had enjoyed it then. Kylo can only hope he has improved with practice, considering all had been learned from questionable sites of the holonet.

Hux is hard and dripping when Kylo rises at last, removing his own clothing. But before he can press hips between thighs, seeking out those lips with his own, Hux stills him with both palms spread wide over his pectoral muscles. There’s an odd fascination to his slow exploration, hands moving as if magnetised, eyes half-lidded and yet strangely focused.

“Do you want to fuck my tits?”

Hux looks up, eyes wide, mouth half-open for a long moment before he finally manages actual words. “ _What_ did you just say?”

“I…” His tongue twists. “…you…” Cheeks blazing, he looks down at Hux’s cock, his own already shrivelling up towards his abdomen. “Forget it.”

“No, _really_.” One hand catches him about the chin, forces his eyes upward. “What the kriff was that in aid of?”

His flush has become far more shame than arousal now. “…I don’t know. Bad holoporn, and all that. People seemed to like it. I guess I just thought…”

The fingers turn to cradling palm. It’s surprisingly gentle as Hux gives but a small shake of his head. “Perhaps…another day.”

He blinks. “Really?”

And Hux chuckles, genuine and slow. “You do present a rare opportunity, Ren.” And he hisses, as the general tweaks one nipple between quick thumb and forefinger. “But for now, I’m quite content for you to just go ahead and fuck me up the ass.” That hand now reaches down, takes him firm about the cock. “So, if you would…?”

With the slick quick to hand, Kylo prepares them both with what he knows is clumsy haste. But Hux’s eyes are upon him the whole time, knowing, very nearly patient. It must hurt when he pushes in; it’s too tight for even his own pleasure. But Hux’s arms rise, fingertips pressing deep into his shoulders. And Kylo surrenders; Kylo gives over. It’s hard and it is quick, but they both seem to want little else. Hux comes first, hand working over his cock; Kylo comes but a moment later, his heat thrust deep into Hux’s willing body.

And when it is over, with his not-quite full weight resting upon him, Kylo tells him the truth.

“I am leaving.”

“I know.” Hux closes his eyes briefly. Then they are open again, even as he turns his head to look to the view beyond the transparisteel viewport. The silvered stars leaving his eyes washed-out, nearly translucent. “Areko says the _Finalizer_ will be operational tomorrow.”

He finds it strange to think that Hux is not obsessively supervising the situation himself. “I am not going to Snoke,” he says, very slow, the words burning upon his tongue as he gives treasonous thought true release. And he licks dry lips with a drier tongue, the rasp of it sweet hot pain. “I’m taking my shuttle,” he adds, and then, just because Hux is still _staring_ , “I’m not coming back.”

If Hux had been surprised by Kylo’s request to bed him, in this he is stunned beyond all rational thought. It takes a long moment before he moves, again. His eyes shift first, break away, rapidly blinking, as if that might make this fractured picture of reality somewhat make sense again. “Oh,” he says, and then, stronger: “ _Oh_ , so this was a goodbye fuck.” And there’s something vicious in him, hurtful and hurt, when he adds with casual malice, “I suppose that it was…adequate.”

Kylo never once looks away. “Will you come with me?”

For a moment there is something deeply hurt in those eyes, as if he had offered Kylo his heart only to watch him devour it right before him. And then the horror is gone, hastily pressed aside, his composure clear act. “Ren. _Don’t_.”

It’s almost apologetic when he shakes his head. “I think this is what I meant all along,” he says, and entirely inappropriate laughter bubbles in hysterical promise beneath every word. “When I first came to you, I mean,” he says. “ _This_ is what I wanted.”

“To betray the Order?” he asks, incredulous and incredible. “To ask me to do the same thing, even though the Order is my _life_?” He covers his face, though he can’t mute his moan. “ _Kriff_ , Ren, Snoke will kill us both.”

It hurts to speak the words aloud. But they must be given, and freely at that. “You could stay.” He smiles, feels every crack it leaves upon his damned face. “But either way, I will go.”

“My place is here.”

It is true, in it’s own way. “Mine isn’t. Not anymore.” He doesn’t hide the bitterness of it. “If even it ever was.”

In the silence that follows, Hux does not once look away. “Why should I come?” he asks, eventually, and Kylo already knows the answer.

“Because you want to.” And then, as if it could truly make all the difference: “I’m going to kill him.”

Hux’s eyes are sharp. “How?”

“I don’t know.” Somehow this is even harder to say; there are dealbreakers for them both, and this might be the one that Hux cannot compromise on. “I can’t do it alone,” he says, and his hands fist on his own thighs. “We can’t, even.” Drawing a deep breath, he says the words that might condemn them both, forever.

“I’m going to ask for help.”

Hux understands almost immediately. His mind has always been too quick for its own good. “They’ll never help you.”

Kylo shakes his head. “They’ll do anything to end this.”

“Do you really believe that?” It’s incredulous. It might be the end of all things. And Kylo raises his eyes, stares to the stars beyond their reach, and wonders at what it might have been, to have been born something other than a Skywalker.

“How do you know they’ll help you?”

Hux’s quiet words bring him back. “It doesn’t matter. I need to ask them.” And then, sudden, burning like the saltwater behind his eyes: “I can’t do it alone.”

“Ren—”

“Hux.” It stops him dead, though the light in his eyes is a familiar one; Hux had never been one to back down from a verbal engagement. But Kylo cannot let this go. “Snoke is too strong,” he says, and shame has him turning from the blue-green storm of his still gaze, looking away to the web of stars beyond the open viewport. “He always isolated me, you know. From family, friends, even the Force – there’s so much of it I don’t know. That I could _never_ know, under him.” His sigh is as heavy as the weight of fate pressing down upon even his broad shoulders. “No, I cannot do this alone. He’s made sure of that.”

Hux can offer only silence. And Kylo cannot look at him, not now.

“But the thing is…” He closes his eyes tight, then looks at him, honest and helpless. “…I don’t _want_ to do it alone.”

The quiet has taken Hux again; he seems so small, in the starlight. “But what use am I?” he says, raising one warning hand before Kylo can even think to answer such rhetorical question. “You might be the prodigal son, returned home to guide them to their inevitable victory. To them, I’m just the mass-murderer who brought down the Hosnian System. I don’t have your powers. You surely know as much as I do about the Order. What could I possibly have to barter for life, amongst them?”

When Kylo snorts, the sound is almost fond, even as he shakes his head. “I’m not going to my mother.” It almost hurts to admit it; given her place in early life, he should not miss the presence of Leia Organa so much as he still does. “They are the heroes of the old days,” he adds, and it feels like the words of a bard when he adds, “We’re turning to the new.”

Hux’s narrowed eyes say that he takes Kylo’s meaning, and also that he does not take to it well. But Kylo goes on, all the same. He must go on. They have no choice.

“The scavenger. The traitor.” He twists his tongue about their unspoken names: _Rey. Finn._ “They both know all about allying themselves with the winning side, first and foremost,” and now the words are quickening, like some fool plan come to true life. “They’ll do what it takes to bring Snoke down. Once I explain to them what he’s done.” Here he pauses, swallows hard. “And what I’m ready to do.”

“Ren—”

“Tomorrow. Alpha cycle. My Upsilon.” They’re not quite orders, but it is little more than an observation when he adds, “I’ve already made what modifications are necessary.”

When he sighs, the back of one hand pressed to his forehead, it leaves him almost with the appearance of some swooning maiden. But Hux has always been anything but, in the grim light of reality. And Kylo sees him so clearly now, sprawled out before him with his lean long muscles, smudges of exhaustion under his closed eyes, and the half-hard cock between his thighs.

“You _do_ realise you’re a terrible mechanic, Ren,” he says, and that only makes him shrug. The truth can hurt. In his experience, it isn’t the truth unless it does.

“Well. There’s still time yet. If someone else would like to make adjustments of his own.” When there is no reply he swallows back his own sigh, and finds it tastes suspiciously of saltwater. “I have to go.”

Hux makes no attempt to stop Kylo from rising. “I know you do.”

When he dresses, it is alone, and in silence. Only when he has made it to the door does he look back. Hux has not moved. He lies still upon the couch, naked and drowsing, opened eyes filled with stars.

“Good night, General.”

“Good night.” Then, just as the door whispers closed between them: “Kylo.”

In his own rooms, Kylo sinks to his knees before Vader. His grandfather’s spirit need not converse with him to make Kylo understand how he had loved her. How he had _lost_ her. Closing his own eyes, Kylo settles in to wait. To see the end of his own story.

Or perhaps, to know at last its true beginning.

 

*****

 

They’re in the cockpit, together; the _Finalizer_ is gone, even her immense size dwindling to nothing at the speed they’d left her at. Hux had never once looked back. Kylo almost wishes he had. But it is too late, now; the co-ordinates are set to the planet that Rey had promised she and Finn would meet them upon. And Hux had been the one to punch the release to hyperspeed.

He’s checking the navcom for the hundredth time, now, lips curled in deep frown and his eyes narrowed to bright slits. He’s always had such trust in Kylo’s skill. “Are you sure she’s coming alone?” he asks, and though it’s the first time he’s voiced as much aloud, Kylo has heard it a thousand times in his mind.

“No, she’s bringing the traitor with her,” he says. And then because he simply cannot resist, “I told you already.”

It earns him a sour look. Kylo gives a sweet smile in return. Rolling his eyes, Hux looks back to the co-ordinates one more time. “If she lied – if she brings the _Resistance_ —”

“I won’t let them have you.”

It’s fierce low promise; even as he says the words, Kylo can taste ash and blood. Hux stares at him now, and Kylo wonders if he can, too. Then he sighs, opens his mouth, only to close it again to no sound. His eyes instead wander sideways, to the smudged stars that light their fraught path. Kylo lets him have the moment. It’s hardly an eternity before he looks back, though he seems to have aged at least a year in the interim.

“I always knew, you know.” It’s very soft, this blow. “Areko told me.”

Fear, disbelief, frustration, _anger_ – they take him all at once, and he cannot focus upon one. Kylo is instead very still, hollow and aching when he speaks aloud. “He did _what_?”

Hux braces one foot against the control panel, pushes his seat back into acute incline; Kylo stares at the high polish, almost catches sight of his own reflection. And Hux shakes his head, pulls Kylo’s eyes upward. “The thing is, I think he thought that he was doing me a favour.” He’s smiling, the curve as distant and strange as a partial eclipse. “Because he figured you didn’t intend to tell me what Areko was ordered to do if I stayed. Because if you didn’t, then you’d know that I was making the choice for _you_. That I’d left the Order not to save my own skin, but because I wanted to be with _you_.” He closes his eyes, but briefly; he’s already thought this through, too many times to count. His voice resonates with low weariness when he asks, “But it wasn’t that at all, was it?”

“Hux.” It’s helpless, almost childish; he does not know how Hux can stand to be near him. But he’s smiling, somehow, a small and secret thing, for all he still looks so very very tired.

“The truth is, you just wanted me to feel as though I’d had a choice.” His throat works, his disbelief becoming more apparent with every word. “That I could do this believing I’d made the choice entirely for myself.”

“Hux, I—”

“I did make the choice, Ren.” That is the sharp tones of the general, brooking to argument, no answerback. But he doesn’t wear the uniform of the Order, here. And he shakes his head, corrects himself but a moment later. “Kylo,” he says, and then, incredibly, “thank you.”

He looks down, presses his hands together to stop them from shaking. But then he realises his entire body has given over to the same and he bites down hard on his tongue, closing his eyes as if the darkness would help. As if the darkness has ever helped.

“But why did you?” Hux’s words come to him there, carefully practised, carefully light. As if their entire lives didn’t rest upon this very moment. “Make this choice, I mean.”

The shuddering breath gives him no oxygen; he still feels as though he is but a moment from loss of consciousness. “I killed my father,” he whispers, and Hux hums, just a little.

“I know.”

And Kylo looks up, finds the world too bright. “I don’t think I made the right choice.”

“Kylo.” Hux leans forward, jaw very tight, his own hands folded tightly in his lap. “As far as I can see, the genuine _choice_? It was never given to you.”

His mind is little more than white noise, without a single coherent thought or emotion to anchor his sanity upon. Everything of him is aching, yearning, and all he wishes for now is to reach out to the man before him.

“But you made _this_ choice.” Hux is very nearly gentle. “You’ve walked away from Snoke.”

“What if it’s the wrong choice?” A whisper is all he can manage. “What if I end up getting you killed because of it?”

He presses his lips together, pushes back in the chair; his expression is thoughtful, tired though it remains. “I would have died had I stayed,” he says, grimacing as though the truth has hurt him. But then, in Kylo’s experience, the truth has always been worse than the lie. “And perhaps I’ll die anyway,” he adds, his expression turning certain. “But this? It was my choice.” And then, almost unintentional, too quick and too light: “And it’s because of you that I had the opportunity to make it.”

He doesn’t even know he’s doing it until he feels the saltwater running in rivulets from his chin, pattering over the tremble of his own hands. The dam releases, then: and he is _sobbing_ , curled into a ball in the slim-backed chair, for all his size ought to make it frankly impossible. It’s inelegant and messy and terrible, and yet…and yet. Hux remains always beside him. He makes no effort to touch him, to comfort him with uncertain hands or the stiff lines of his body, unaccustomed to such display. But he does not move away. He stays. He witnesses.

That is more than anyone else has done for Kylo, in a very long, long time. And when it is over, Kylo finds a cool cloth pressed into his hands, silent and sure. It’s followed shortly by a handkerchief; it’s even monogrammed, the close-woven linen far richer than anything standard issue. He can’t bear to dirty it. Hux doesn’t ask for it back. He just hands him instead a small box, which opens with the bacta-scent of cleansing wipes. When Kylo is done, the handkerchief tucked furtively away in one deep pocket, he looks up to find Hux staring out again to the unseen horizon.

“Kylo?”

“What?”

He turns, and his face is half-shadowed even in the light. “I’m not good at this.” But he’s rising all the same, one hand out. “Come with me?”

In the back, they find the small bunk together. It’s not made for two men of their size. Kylo decides it doesn’t matter. Hux certainly seems not to care, not even bothering to strip himself from his clothes. They barely get their trousers down around their thighs before one slippery hand moves between them, guiding his own cock deep into Kylo’s willing body.

It’s quiet as he moves inside of him. He does not know what Hux wants, but the man guides him through it anyway, wordless and thoughtless, their bodies speaking a dual language neither of them can hear. It sends a terrible spasm of fear through him: he cannot be without this. Is this what he has taken from his mother? Because if it is, Kylo knows he cannot ever ask her forgiveness. But he understands now that if Anakin had found this with Padmé, then this is why the loss of her had driven him to such bleak and utter madness.

Still he moves within him; the sensation stokes his arousal until it is a low and constant hum beneath his skin. Hux still moves over him, inside him. And orgasm comes sudden, unexpected; his mouth opens on a denial, but all that escapes is a high, gasping _oh_! It might be humiliating, if not for Hux’s wry expression, his jerking hips still pushing him through. One sure hand wraps around his cock, coaxes free another orgasm so that his cock spurts this time, clenching so tight Hux must pause himself, or be consumed.

Only when Kylo has utterly stilled does Hux begin, again. His own release is whispered into Kylo’s skin, too low and too breathless to be heard. Kylo knows what it means, all the same. And it is very quiet between them, then. Perhaps it is a form of meditation. Kylo doesn’t know how he’ll ever find peace anywhere else, ever again.

But of course Hux won’t rest, not for long. Not with work yet to be done. They are not far out from their rendezvous, and while he may not be the general any longer, he will not be feral about it. He spends far too long in the small ‘fresher aboard the shuttle, ordering himself to perfect appearance. Kylo allows him. He’ll just be chaos in return. They’re well-met, well-matched.

The landing comes too soon. Hux knows the systems better, but in practise he is a stiff pilot, all procedure and no instinct. It’s rare for Kylo to be better at this. It doesn’t seem to matter now, though. Not as it used to. He goes to the galley to make them both a stim-laden drink, bringing them back where Hux wordlessly accepts his lidded cup. His fingers are cold where they brush together, slow and deliberate. Kylo’s cheeks take on a strange flush as he resumes his own place beside him, his own drink in its holder as he takes over the control Hux willingly surrenders. The small moon grows ever larger in their viewport as Kylo begins to prepare the craft for atmospheric re-entry.

Minutes pass, and then a low gasp has him straightening, stiffening, one hand reaching for a saber that is no longer there even as Hux splutters again into his caf. His eyes are fixed upon the holocom screen, so wide and bright it seems for a moment Kylo could read the revelation there.

“What is it?” he asks, leaning over, squinting at the tiny print. Hux still has not looked away, voice low. For a second Kylo thinks the tremble says he on the verge of tears. But then he speaks again, and Kylo knows it is _laughter_.

“News.” He raises the cup, takes a short sharp sip, shakes his head as though to remind reality to behave itself. “We’re not the only defectors from the Order, it seems.” And now he actually _does_ laugh. “Though we’re just listed as missing, presumed traitors. _He’s_ been quite clear about switching his allegiance to the other side.”

His hands jerk, an unfortunate manoeuvre when in low orbit, eyes turning from the HUD. “ _No_. No, he _didn’t_ —”

But Kylo does not see it for himself. The hail from below comes first. “Upsilon, identity yourselves.”

For a moment, there is only silence, and the faint hum of the open line. Then Kylo clears his throat, meets Hux’s eyes, and speaks alone. “We are the _Parhelion_.”

“Ah.” There’s a wealth of memory and harsh undercurrent there, for all the little enough time they’ve known each other. When she speaks, again, it is though he has heard her voice a thousand times or more. “You’re actually here, then.”

Kylo passes his tongue over dry lips. “Permission to land?”

She pauses. But only for the briefest of moments. He’d touched her mind, just as she’d reached inside his. It had been only a moment. But even then, they’d both known how it would end.

“Granted,” Rey says, but the line remains open. Kylo looks to Hux alone, hands still on the controls. They are far enough away that they can still turn back. The choice still stands.

His red hair glints silver in the dying starlight as he leans forward, says but one word. “Accepted.”

Kylo closes his eyes, hands tight about the stick as he pushes it forward, changes their trajectory into clear descent. But he doesn’t need to look to see where they are going. He knows Hux is by his side as they both go down, together. This is what they can do for one other. And Kylo decides that he needs nothing else.


End file.
